If you're in the Los Angeles area this weekend, you can catch a classic film with special interest for LGBTQ+ viewers on the big screen -- Giant, the sprawling saga of Texas ranchers and oil barons from the 1920s through the 1950s, now in a 4K digital restoration.
The restoration will have its premiere Friday and Saturday at the Fine Arts Theatre Beverly Hills, a movie palace built in 1937. Screenings are scheduled for 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. each day, and the 8 p.m. screening Friday will start with a half-hour panel discussion about the restoration.
Giant, released in 1956, has a cast that includes gay and bisexual stars as well as performers who are icons to the LGBTQ+ community. It features Rock Hudson as rancher Bick Benedict; Elizabeth Taylor as his independent-minded wife, Leslie; Mercedes McCambridge as his butch sister, Luz; and James Dean as Jett Rink, an impoverished ranch hand who gets rich from an oil strike. Along the way, the film explores racism and sexism on the range.
George Stevens won the Oscar for Best Director for Giant, and the film received nine other nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor nods for Hudson and Dean, and Best Supporting Actress for McCambridge.
The panel will be moderated by Randy Haberkamp, senior vice president of restoration for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and will include with Daphne Dentz, senior vice president of emerging formats, mastering and content acquisition for Warner Bros., and George Feltenstein, WarnerMedia library historian.
Warner Bros. used the original camera negatives, original soundtrack, and other resources to do the restoration. Funding came from Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation and Turner Classic Movies, which showed the restored Giant at its film festival in April. "George Stevens's tribute to the Lone Star State has never looked better," TCM noted on the festival website.
Tickets are $15 for viewers age 13 and older and $13 for those age 12 and younger. Advance purchase is recommended; find tickets at the Fine Arts website, the Google Play Store, the Apple App store, Fandango, and Atom Tickets. The theater's box office will open at 3:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The theater is located at 8556 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Free parking is available at the Beverly Hills City Garage, 321 S. La Cienega Blvd., after 4 p.m. Friday and all day Saturday, and metered street parking is available (and is free in the evenings).
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