This little-known movie caught me by surprise, for all kinds of reasons, not the least being Nicholas Ray's awkward adventure into Douglas Sirk territory. More so, the story's focus on the now-more-timely topic of prescription drug addiction is captivating to see from a perspective 60 years later. As a piece of post-war cultural history, it is compelling, dealing as it does with doubts about medicine and concerns about mental illness. As a movie though, I was distracted by its stiff production and histrionic message. It sure is strange enough to keep your attention in any case.

Bigger than Life (1956)Tightly made, vividly acted film about a contemporary crisis--the use and abuse of a new "miracle" drug. Watching James Mason suffer, and then make other people suffer, and then face the final bells of his life, is half the movie. He's such a uniquely subtle and powerful actor (at the same time), always filled with poise and a whiff of kindly diffidence. In a way, this is a precursor to the recent movie idea in "Limitless," where a drug makes you "bigger than life," though this is no fantasy. The drug here is cortisone, ingested orally. It had been understood as a natural (adrenal gland) steroid hormone and was manufactured (by Merck) and on the market by around 1950. And by 1956 when this movie came out it was considered a new kind of penicillin, but rather than just be an antibiotic, it seemed to just make you stronger against all kinds of ailments, especially those that involved swelling of some kind.Director Nicholas Ray does his usual wonders with interpersonal drama and makes this quite believable, as well as dramatic, and Joe MacDonald does his usual wonders with the camera-work. The writing, too, is crisp and believable (both Ray and Mason helped with the screenplay). In all, it's a top shelf production and a great story.But it fails somehow to be a great film, and I think the main reason is the hook to the plot, about the wonder drug, is a little too neatly packaged, with a few scenes that are almost like public service announcements. We sort of know before we are "supposed" to know that it's going to go bad--the clues go beyond foreshadowing--and so when we find out we are right, the edge is off of the narrative. Only the very end is left hanging, though you figure, with Merck keeping an eye on things, that events really can't go too wrong. According to Wikipedia, the American response at the time was shock and the movie did poorly (I guess because it looked like an attack on the nuclear family, such was the 1950s). But the critics loved it then and like it now. A movie this well made is still a thrill to watch for all the small things--Walter Matthau in a caricatured side role as the good Uncle, the psychological effects as manifest in Mason, and even the glimpse into the attitude toward medicine at the time. I don't think it's a typical reaction to cortisone, however (from what I've read)--this is a particular case where some inherent manic-depression is triggered, and exaggerated. It would be interesting to see this re-calibrated and filmed again in modern times, but with the subtlety here, the destruction of an ordinary family without shameless excess.

Nicholas Ray directs "Bigger Than Life". The plot? Ed Avery (James Mason), suffering from a fatal inflammation of the arteries, is prescribed an experimental drug. He becomes addicted to this drug, which leads to severe side effects, chief among which is the development of certain tyrannical tendencies.Based on a New Yorker article by Berton Roueche, "Bigger Than Life" initially appears to be one of those condescending "social problem" films about the dangers of drug abuse and addiction (see Otto Preminger's "The Man With The Golden Arm", released the previous year). But it eventually becomes clear that Ray is wholly uninterested in pharmaceuticals. Instead, Ed Avery becomes an existential figure typical of Ray's cinema. He's a man who has turned his back on Post War America, deemed the American Dream precarious and wholly rotten, is ashamed that he must work two jobs to keep his family afloat, barely communicates with his wife and child, finds suburbia to be both dull and devoid of any meaningful substance, deems the post war economic boom to be nothing but vacuous consumerism, and feebly keeps travel posters of exotic locales in his home as a means of extricating himself from a stifling, claustrophobic and wholly toxic situation. "We've become dull," he tells his wife, "I've become dull."Ed's arterial inflammation is therefore not only a literal illness, but a manifestation of what Sartre called "existential nausea", a symptom of both acute consciousness and a toxic environment. In a similar regard, the "miracle drug" which Ed is prescribed becomes a stand-in for any addiction used to dull the senses and escape pain. Recall Ray's "In A Lonely Place" and "On Dangerous Ground", where men face similar anxieties and disappear into either booze or their careers.Ed's breakdown is far more complex than previous Ray "heroes", however. Crushed by the weight of his own impotency/castration, his perceived insignificance, Ed rebels against his failed Oedipal role. He not only begins to resent his wife and son, whom he blames for restricting his freedom and achievements, but becomes a kind of super-ego agent, wholly vengeful, sadistic and punishing. Frighteningly, Ed then inflates further from a symbol of raging patriarchal authority to a fascist figure, denouncing every institutions he comes into contact with (the school, the family, the church, and the general economic hierarchy of postwar America). Only he knows what's best for everyone.It is only when Ed's son points out Ed's failings that Ed's self importance begins to diminish. Forced to cast aside his grandiose plans, Ed ceases exalting himself, and instead starts transposing his desires onto his son, whom he begins grooming and prepping for greatness. But this too fails, resulting in Ed's desire to kill himself and purge the world of his "inferior" wife and child.Before attempting to kill his family, Ed quotes a passage from the Bible in which Abraham offers his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. The implication, of course, is that Ed, like Abraham, is putting himself above ethics, sacrificing himself and his family for some higher authority. What's interested is that, in the Bible, God intervenes and saves Isaac once Abraham has demonstrated his devotion. The opposite is the case in "Bigger Than Life". "God was wrong!" Avery screams, before attempting murder. Who then is Ed's sacrifice for? Ed's unusual in that he denounces all symbolic authority, all social structures, and even himself as a substitute Ordering Force; suicidally, he wants to be free of all association.Aesthetically, the film mixes domestic horror, melodrama and German Expressionism. Ray's use of macabre shadows and darkness recall the horrors of Fritz Lang, whilst various medical treatments act as a precursor to "The Exorcist", with their eerie red lights and grotesque looking X ray machines. Remove the macro-cosmic, historical themes of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and you likewise have Ray's "Bigger Than Life", both films about school teachers who slowly lose their minds and abuse their families, both exposing what Walter Metz calls the "inherent inadequacies of the patriarchal family structure", both charting the uncanny, where the familiar domestic problems of the "heim" conceal the "unheim", the darker desires of familial annihilation and horrific behaviour.The film makes use of simple, but effective, symbolism. A stairway, the bridge between private and public, becomes the point of violent conflict (as it was in Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause"), and two everyday objects are used repeatedly throughout the film to create different effects. Think the glass of milk Ed drinks during his bridge game, which echoes the glass of barium drunk during an X-ray exam and then becomes the contentious pitcher of milk of the final dinner scene. A simple football is used for similar effect, initially used as a proud mantelpiece, then a source of shame, then an instrument of torture and finally a peace offering. Today, films like "American Beauty", "Blue Velvet", "Little Children", "The Ice Storm", "Revolutionary Road" etc etc are praised for "exposing the horror beneath suburban life". Such films were routinely made in the 1940s and 50s (think "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", "Trouble in Tahiti", "Shadow of a Doubt", or another James Mason vehicle, "Lolita"), most of which say more than their modern counterparts.Upon release, "Bigger Than Life" wasn't received well in the United States, but the French loved it. Once the baby boomers grew up the film began to garner appreciation in the West, until the boomers themselves became Ed Avery, leading to another wave of "domestic horror" films in the 1990s.8.5/10 - Nicholas Ray, one of the most idiosyncratic voices of early Hollywood, is always worth watching.

Is there such a thing as a "normal man"? And if there were, how would he react to extraordinary circumstances such as a life-or-death struggle? Superficially, this film directed by Nick Ray from Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum's story seems to fit an exploration of these kind of ideas. Within the film's mechanics however is a story that sows more doubt into the soil of middle America -- we feel at times as if the psychotic delusions that have overtaken our schoolteacher family man Ed Avery (James Mason) might actually have more truth to them than the bland and self-consciously "dull" life he previously shared with his reserved and dutiful wife Lou (Barbara Rush).That's not to say that the addictive effects of cortisone are all beneficial, either to himself or his family. The substance saves his life and then slowly turns him into a psychotic. But along the way, he punctures through the malaise of the suburbs almost like a grown-up version of director Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" -- throwing into question the complacent attitudes he finds around him. As a teacher, he begins to realize that education is slipping because teachers are told to bolster students' confidence and esteem instead of making them realize how little they know; this is just one of the pearls he drops that we as a culture would have been well-advised to pay attention to. The messenger may have been quite confused, but his message comes in clear at times.At other times, his rigor when focused on his son takes on a form of abuse that would surely crush the boy's spirit, so we can see that some of the Mason character's ideas have been already taken too far. It's as if the film is saying that the moment of insight is just a fleeting one separating two chasms of confusion. There are only two states of being for our hero -- numbed contentment or delusional hyper-engagement. But in the transition between the two the movie seems to reach its peak of black humor and subdued drama, much more powerful for me than some of the moments later when his psychosis took a physical form. This film deserves to be seen in a double feature with "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." Or watched in a concert with Leonard Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti." It's amazing how these works of art were already psychoanalyzing the phenomenon of the suburbs itself. Is this a viable way of life? What kind of damage does it do to the human spirit, to be crammed in with so many others in a sort of simulation of wealth and luxury? For Ed Avery and his wife simply going into a different department store is a major social dilemma fraught with peril. How could they be expected to deal with such a major crisis as a drug addiction? What about the wife particularly, wanting to cling to the very last moment to her husband's prerogative? And the son so accustomed to trusting his judgment? Just as Avery's mental illness lays bare fundamental problems in his life and with his relationships, the film itself exposes weaknesses in the patriarchal and provincial spirit of the suburbs. Much like again "Rebel", this movie doesn't just typify the suburban scene and depicts its complexities -- if you want to see the 1960s as an explosion in American culture, this film is showing you that the fuse was already lit.