I have always loved, unreservedly loved, Giant—the grandly scaled and stately 1956 film that sinks us into the world of a Texas rancher and his Marylander wife through 25 years of marriage as their state, their country, their wealth, and their own hidebound attitudes undergo the same seismic financial and social changes that transformed America in the first half of the 20th century. Its radio ads declared Giant “a big story of big feelings and big things!” And so it is.

Giant is enthralling and juicy and compelling, a high-water mark in classic American moviemaking—in which a master director like George Stevens takes you by the hand, sits you down in your seat, and says, “Come along with me while I tell you a long, fascinating, bumpy story about this country.” And long it is. Three hours and 21 minutes in all. (The only movie of comparable length in our time is The Return of the King, released in 2003.) Stevens said it was a “reflective film,” which he called “the service we can perform as against this other visual medium television, which has to move fast and tell its story within extremely limited time.”