So Big (1953)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

A lot of fun.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

My major criticism of this 1953 film was that it should have run longer. It should have shown Dirk move back gradually into the field of architecture and get the girl portrayed by Nancy Olson. When the picture ends, neither has occurred.In the 1950s Jane Wyman was in somber mode. After garnering the Oscar for "Johnny Belinda," in 1948, she followed that up with another nomination for the all-time tear-jerker "The Blue Veil," in 1951 and the remake of "Magnificent Obsession," the year after 'Big.' "All that Heaven Allows" came in '56 and "Miracle in the Rain" completed her tear-jerking screen performances.In this film she suffers the heartbreak of the losses of her father and husband, the latter a dirt farmer. As her husband, Sterling Hayden captured the essence of the simplistic life.I wonder if this picture were trying to emulate O.E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth," a marvelous book about mid-western farming with its trials and tribulations.As taught by her father in the film, Wyman becomes a rugged individualist. She is a strong, firm believer in achieving by yourself what you are destined to do. She teaches those principles to her son who disappoints her by going into the sales portion of architecture instead of the profession itself after college.Wyman never lets son Steve Forrest know of her disappointment and he comes to realize how right she was. Martha Hyer is her usual upper-class matron with values consisting of making the big dollars.This is still another of Wyman's gut-wrenching performances, but she had better in the films mentioned above. Still, this is a story of perseverance, hard work, and endurance.

While practically nobody else was doing so, Edna Ferber was writing women who didn't accept their lot in life, challenged men, proved more mature and responsible than men, and maintained their femininity while doing so. An archetypal Ferber woman is the heroine of "So Big," played, a little monotonously, by Jane Wyman. (She's too old to be convincing as a young girl, and too young to be a convincing timeworn old woman.) Sprawling through decades of American history like so many Ferber doorstop novels, it's fine melodrama, though oddly shaped--many years of Selina's existence are just missing, and the third act, with son Steve Forrest chasing after Nancy Olson, feels like an afterthought, as do many of the supporting characters, played by a mostly no-name cast. Sterling Hayden, as the love of Wyman's life, is an odd character, too--he clearly loves Selina, yet laughs at her attempts at betterment and is a terrible chauvinist; you feel Ferber kills him off because she honestly doesn't know what to do with him. An uncharacteristically unmemorable Max Steiner score grinds in the background, the photography is a black-and-white eyeful, and the biggest surprise is how good young Richard Beymer is, as an adolescent with a crush on Wyman--eight years later, again under Robert Wise's direction, he starred in "West Side Story," and was terrible.

I enjoyed the movie, not just because of the cast, but because of the faithfulness to detail, r/t the actual book, "So Big" by Ferber. It shows the values of responsibility not just to our work, but to people, and to the beauty that is all around us, if we would just open our eyes and see it.

If you like terrific acting, triumphs over adversity, laced with plenty of life's heartbreaks, So Big is what Hollywood does best for you. Contrived? A bit. Overly Theatrical? guilty as charged. Gripping melodrama from beginning to end? You bet. It's all relationship-driven so men who disdain "chick-flicks" should leave this one alone. All others should find it as wonderful as I do.