A big flop in its day despite Edna Ferber's solid track record and it's not hard to see why. Giant was such a big hit you wonder why they didn't study that more closely - the 1960 adaptation of Cimarron made similar errors.
Giant focused strongly on Elizabeth Taylor's journey, and her relationship with Rock Hudson and James Dean. That was the core of that film.
This doesn't seem to have a core. I guess it kind of has one in the relationship between Richard Burton and Robert Ryan. Burton is a sulky World War One veteran who can't get a job in Seattle so he winds up in Alaska. Ryan picks him up out of the ocean and they become partners. Ryan seems to kind of fall in love with him, as per the fashion of many films of the time, but the friendship flounders when Burton falls for Ryan's fiancee, Carolyn Jones.
The film pulls its punches on the drama though - Jones loves Burton and he loves her but he goes off and marries rich Martha Hyer. Jones gets upset, Ryan realises they're in love, and Ryan goes and sooks off. Jones doesn't get with Burton she kind of hangs around up the street. Hyer and Burton have an unhappy marriage but it's hard to care; Ryan goes and lives with the eskimos and has a kid with an eskimo woman who has no lines and dies in childbirth (this was typical of "liberal" Hollywood films of the time).
Hyer and Burton's kid grows up to be Shirley Knight, and Ryan's kid grows up to be Steve Harris and they wind up falling in love and having a kid before both conveniently dying. Their kid is Diane McBain, whose character apparently was the lead of the novel, but only appears in the last half hour here. She has a romance with Ray Danton, Burton's lawyer, during a very dull plot about Alaska trying to get statehood.
It just doesn't work. Ryan's character is meant to be moral and good but is just annoying,crapping on about Alaska and how much he hates Burton. Because Burton fell for his girl (they never did anything) and introduced fishing traps? I think Burton is meant to be racist in a way because he makes cracks about Ryans half breed kid, but early on in the film he sticks up for Chinese George Takei.
There is some sort of theme about contributing to Alaska versus taking, which is kind of interesting, but it isn't dramatised.
Really the film should've been about Carolyn Jones' character - an Alaska pioneer in love with two men, who tries to do the right thing, and raises women. It needed to be a female orientated story and have a star in this role - Jones is a good actor but not a star.
Richard Burton isn't comfortably cast as an American. Three generations of women are played by blondes who look the same and don't have differentiating characteristics: Heyer, Knight, McBain.
By the end it's hard to care.
But you now, I've got to say I didn't mind it that much, because my expectations were so low. It's an old fashioned melodrama with lots of story. I enjoyed the colour and the shots of Alaska - and the Alaskan setting is a bit of a novelty.
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