Giant 1956 - From rigid conservatism to mindless materialism

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IMDB Rating: 7,7

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Mercedes McCambridge, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor

"George Stevens' sprawling adaptation of Edna Ferber's best-selling novel successfully walks a fine line between potboiler and serious drama for its 210-minute running time, making it one of the few epics of its era that continues to hold up as engrossing entertainment across the decades. Even if it hadn't starred three of the most iconic screen figures of the 1950s, George Stevens's Giant would still be an emotionally powerful and visually striking film; adding Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean (in his final performance) to the mix was just the icing on the cake. Dean contributes the highest-caliber fireworks, though his Method style sometimes blends uncomfortably with the more traditional performances of the other actors, but Stevens also drew atypically strong performances from Taylor and Hudson, who delivers perhaps his best performance on screen next to Seconds (1966). The story is a glorified soap opera, but Stevens's epic production strengthens the narrative rather than drowning it, providing a visual metaphor for the intimidating vastness of the Texas landscape. The image of the vast Benedict mansion slowly appearing as a tiny dot on the horizon is only the most memorable of the film's many indelible images. Giant is as big and sprawling as Texas itself; it's the tininess of the larger-than-life characters in the oilfields of the Southwest that keeps them human, and makes them all the more fascinating.
The talented supporting cast includes Mercedes McCambridge as Bick’s frustrated sister, put out by the new woman of the house, and with Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper as the Benedict’s rebellious children.
Giant was nominated for 10 Academy Awards with director George Stevens winning his second Oscar for this ambitious, grandly realized epic of the changing socio-economic (and physical) landscape of modern Texas." - www.allmovie.com

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Shane 1953 - A simple Western elevated to mythical status

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IMDB Rating: 7,7

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan

"Despite being burdened with grand pretensions, George Steven's Shane stands securely as one of the most intelligent westerns of its era. The story, underscored by potent historical conflicts between cattle ranchers and homesteaders, and broad philosophical issues contrasting the rugged individualist of American lore with the value of belonging to a community, is mythic in scope. The massive, imposing and ragged landscape of Wyoming's Grand Tetons, captured capably by Oscar winner Loyal Griggs, provides an appropriately awe-inspiring backdrop to the action. Stevens rarely passes up a chance to offer up attention-seeking directorial flourishes (long takes capped by extended fades), but in the end his faithfulness to the characters and their stories preserves the movie's greatness. Jack Palance, whose sneering charisma is palpable, is the embodiment of evil as the ranchers' hired assassin. Alan Ladd, who is enigmatic and mysterious as the neo-pacifist ex-gunslinger titular character, is quietly imposing (despite his lack of physical stature) in the role. As a man with a dark past, Shane willingly martyrs himself in order to atone for past sins and to save his newly adopted family. Therefore, it is appropriate that his son-by-proxy Joey provides the predominant point-of-view, since it is his coming-of-age that reflects the maturation of the American west.
Cinematographer Loyal Griggs imbues this no-frills tale with the outer trappings of an epic, forever framing the action in relation to the unspoiled land surrounding it. A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s screenplay, adapted from the Jack Schaefer novel, avoids the standard good guy/bad guy clichés: both homesteaders and cattlemen are shown as three-dimensional human beings, flaws and all
Nominated for 5 Oscars, winner of one for its stunning color cinematography." - www.allmovie.com

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A place in the sun 1951 - With two of cinema's most beautiful faces

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IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Raymond Burr

"Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can't forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George's personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she'll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George's arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason, Raymond Burr.
A huge improvement over the 1931 An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg, A Place in the Sun softens some of the rough edges of Dreiser's naturalism, most notably in the passages pertaining to George's and Angela's romance. Even those 1951 bobbysoxers who wouldn't have been caught dead poring through the Dreiser original were mesmerized by the loving, near-erotic full facial closeups of Clift and Taylor as they pledge eternal devotion. A Place in the Sun won six Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, although it lost Best Picture to An American in Paris." - www.allmovie.com

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I remember Mama 1948 - An affecting portrayal of family life

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oskar Homolka, Philip Dorn, Cedric Hardwicke, Rudy Vallee, Barbara O'Neil

"George Stevens's charming film version of Kathryn Forbes' collection of short stories entitled Mama's Bank Account features Irene Dunne as Mama in one of her finest and most ingratiating performances. The film is narrated by Mama's daughter Katrin (Barbara Bel Geddes), recalling the trials and tribulations of her family in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.
Stevens was occasionally taken to sentimentality in even his most dramatic films, and here, if no different, it is at least more appropriate. The movie is another excellent example of how films centered on women became increasingly important in the post-WWII era. Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography captures the feel of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, and the production values are adequate without being showy - somewhat better than average for an RKO picture from this era." - www.allmovie.com

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Gunga Din 1939 - The ultimate motion picture adventure

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IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sam Jaffe

"George Stevens' Gunga Din was not only the best of Hollywood's forays into colonialist adventure yarns, it served as the blueprint for many action-adventure movies for years after its release. It is a tribute to Stevens' direction and the uniformly superb cast that the film was a rousing success upon its release, and has endured as a popular favorite for decades since. Americans have always had problematic relationships with stories of British colonialism, but they also love a good adventure yarn, and the usual Hollywood compromise is to ignore the particulars, hold one's nose at the worst elements of subjugation, and just tell the story. That was the approach of the five screenwriters (including Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and the uncredited William Faulkner) involved in the project, and director Stevens adhered to their work to the letter in telling Rudyard Kipling's story of life, love, and adventure on the frontier of the Indian subcontinent. In the film, the British army is a peace-keeping force, protecting the native populace from a murderous cult of religious fanatics who kill anyone in their way, including their own people. If the paternalistic attitude of the British seems heavy-handed, the oversight is more than outweighed by the savagery of the characters they're fighting. The pacing includes room for ample roughhousing, some of it bordering on slapstick, and rich character development. The actors play their parts as though they were born for them: Victor McLaglen, in particular, cuts a surprisingly dashing figure as Sergeant McChesney; the actor was nearly a decade away from settling into the more comical and jovial character roles that he played in John Ford's films. Cary Grant displays a larcenous side to his screen persona which in many ways anticipates his most compelling dramatic performance, in None But the Lonely Heart. Ironically, for a film that introduced author Kipling to the mass public than any other adaptation of his work, Gunga Din ran afoul of the sensibilities of the author's widow, who objected to the scenes depicting an unnamed, Kipling-like journalist, and those shots were cut at her request after the first run of the movie. These scenes would remain unseen until the late 1980s, when they were restored under the auspices of Turner Entertainment, the company that purchased the RKO film library.
Originally slated to be directed by Howard Hawks, Gunga Din was taken out of Hawks' hands when the director proved to be too slow during the filming of Bringing Up Baby. His replacement was George Stevens, who proved to be slower and more exacting than Hawks had ever been!" - www.allmovie.com

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Swing time 1936 - Heavenly dancing from Astaire & Rogers

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028333/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, Helen Broderick, Betty Furness

"Perhaps the perfect example of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers appeal, Swing Time is a charming romantic-fantasy that's almost impossible to resist when its musical set pieces are in motion. The plot, however minimal, only distracts from the classic melodies and entertaining dance sequences. Directed by the venerable George Stevens, Swing Time was the fifth Astaire-Rogers film, and came out during the peak of their popularity; it's of a piece with the duo's other successes, and in fact markedly resembles their earlier hit, 1935's Top Hat. Perhaps the most cherished dance number is "Bojangles of Harlem," during which Astaire dances with shadows and pays tribute to famous dancer Bill Robinson. The Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields score also includes such standards-to-be as 'Pick Yourself Up', 'A Fine Romance', 'The Way You Look Tonight', and 'Never Gonna Dance. The peerless supporting cast of Swing Time includes Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Eric Blore, and Landers Stevens, the actor-father of the film's director, George Stevens." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/swing-time-v48170/

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Alice Adams 1935 - Hepburn as Tarkington's loveliest heroine

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026056/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable, Hedda Hopper, Hattie McDaniel

"Alice Adams does a credible job of transferring Booth Tarkington's popular Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen, even if it adds a happier ending than the one in the book. A significant part of the credit belongs to director George Stevens, who keeps the film briskly paced without sacrificing character development and atmosphere. Filmed during the Great Depression, Alice Adams takes a satirical view of the 1920s, reminding 1935 audiences of some of the shallowness of those 'better days'. Hepburn's performance dominates the film, and the supporting cast functions mostly as props, though Fred MacMurray, Hepburn's nominal co-lead, manages to shine in moments. The film received two Oscar nominations, for Best Picture and for Hepburn's performance. Alice Adams was the first major directorial assignment for George Stevens, as well as one of the few Katharine Hepburn vehicles of the 1930s to score a hit with the public." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/alice-adams-v1471/

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