Giant

This was the Yellowstone of its time: a big, sweeping modern Western built around an imposing ranch and family dynamics. But instead of Kevin Costner, Elizabeth Taylor is the true centre of this tale of old money (cattle rancher Jordan Benedict, played by Rock Hudson) vs new (oil tycoon Jett Rink, James Dean). The saga sprawls across the decades but has plenty to say about the dark undercurrents flowing through the West. There Will Be Blood is just over the horizon.

A gentle satire, woven around the luminous beauty of Elizabeth Taylor and the haunting brilliance of James Dean…Stevens captures the inexorable course of age and change, social change particularly. He uses detail like a novelist: the changing decor of the living room of the main house at Reata carries us stylistically from the 30s to the 50s. Because he has to proceed visually, he makes choices novelist Edna Ferber never got around to making.

Larry McMurtry

James Dean delivers one of the most iconic performances in film history.

Time Out

It’s a freak: a wildly successful mid-1950s Technicolor film about race, class, and gender from a radical perspective, with a charismatic, unsubjugated woman at the center…Taylor’s Leslie Benedict possesses a moral stature and a fearlessness that overshadow all else: she tells off powerful men, acts on behalf of the people who are supposed to be invisible, and generally fights authority.

Rebecca Solnit, Harper’s Magazine