Purely Joyful Movie!

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

SYNOPSIS: Based on an actual case history, this movie "dramatically portrays the evils of an indiscriminate use of drugs" such as cortisone and similar steroids like prednisone. NOTES: Mason's first film as a producer and Fox's 59th CinemaScope feature.COMMENT: All the controversy surrounding this film when it was first released has now been forgotten. Although there are still people in the community who would undoubtedly benefit by its message, the film must ultimately stand or fall by the power of its own dramatic story, the credibility of its characterizations, the realism of its acting, and the vigor of its direction. On all these counts, it fails dismally. The story is not forceful. It is dull, long and over-drawn. The characters come over as humdrum, uninteresting, pasteboard figures. They seem not bigger than life, but smaller. Much smaller. The acting, especially by the principals, is often unconvincing. And as for the direction, plodding and uninspired seem too mild to describe the lifeless, static, pedestrian and completely lacking in visual appeal picturization here presented by Nicholas Ray. To quote Rupert Butler: "Some of the CinemaScope set-ups are noticeably awkward and primitive. The use of the wider screen and color seem unnecessary."

How is it that I'd never heard of this movie before? "Bigger Than Life" is a dream come true for those movie fans (I count myself among them) who love the decade of the 1950s for its total cinematic schizophrenia. I can't think of another decade that created whole omnibuses of films more strongly opposed to one another. It seems that half of the filmmakers of the 50s were churning out earnest Technicolor pap that tried to sell the American public a version of the 50s that simply didn't exist yet which everyone so desperately wanted to believe did, while the other half were making movies about everything that was wrong with the very version of America the other half was clinging to. If you're a fan of subtext in films, and especially interested in seeing how filmmakers could work within the conventions of a genre while turning those conventions against themselves, the 50s are your decade. And for the ultimate master of subtext, look no further than Nicholas Ray.There isn't a Ray film I've seen that isn't dripping in subtext, socio-political, sexual, gender-based, you name it. "Bigger Than Life" stars a towering James Mason as a family man who's turned into a literal monster when he becomes addicted to a drug that helps keep a life-threatening medical problem at bay. The film goes to some jaw-dropping places, especially toward the end, as Mason's character evolves from protector to worst nightmare and the picture-perfect family life depicted in the earlier parts of the film dissolve before our very eyes. However, Ray's point all along is that that picture-perfect family never really existed in the first place, and the drug on which Mason gets hooked brings out the "id" in him and the family dynamic that's been lurking there all along.Ray was the rare director who could make the saturated Technicolor and massive Cinemascope aspect ratios of 1950s filmmaking work to his advantage and serve his artistic purposes, rather than simply be used to photograph pretty gowns and landscapes. In fact, despite its Cinemascope grandeur, "Bigger Than Life" is all about cramped interiors -- offices, bedrooms, one's own feverish mind -- and the skeletons in the closets, real and imagined, that are hiding there.Grade: A

Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life was released a year after his explosive, sensational Rebel Without A Cause and the two share a lot in common thematically. Both films present a main character who is at a conflict with the state of the world, busting at their seams trying to escape the walls that confine the daily life of the American family. Where Rebel featured James Dean's now iconic symbol of troubled youth Jim Stark, Bigger Than Life gives us James Mason's Ed Avery, the every man father with a beautiful wife and bright-eyed young son.Avery is a schoolteacher who suffers from mysterious and severe physical pains that come at him out of nowhere, a literal symbolism of the ache to escape the confines of the home. There are a lot of subtle devices used throughout the film to further implement this theme, like the family having pictures of exotic locations hung up on the walls to symbolize their desire to get out and away. When his pains cause him to finally collapse in his home he makes the decision to go and see a doctor, where they inform him that he only has a few months to live, but good news comes in the convenience of a new "miracle drug" that is supposed to cure his every ailment. The miracle of it all is that the drug works, he is cured and his pains suffer him no longer, but the ache to escape from the home is turned on it's head as the side effects of the drug produce a psychosis that turn this grinning father into the family's worst nightmare.Based on a "New Yorker" article about a real life case, Ray uses the film mostly in the context of dissecting the American home, but there's also a small dose of condemnation of the medical practice that is intriguing. He has always said that he wished he was able to attack the doctors more directly, but even still he found a way to shed a negative light on them almost literally, shooting them as if they were the villains of the picture and giving an ominous tone to whenever they appear on screen. Still, his focus is certainly on the domestic strife that occurs when Avery's mood is turned and this is where the film shines most resoundingly. In making the transition into psychosis, James Mason's warm, delightful performance becomes appropriately sinister, giving the picture an ominous and intimidating tone.The shot framing and lighting has to be commended a great deal here, with Ray shooting the characters mostly from the ground up, giving a very open and empty feeling to the home above them, along with using shadows in a striking way to create a looming effect that was very impressive. I have to say, it's one of the most well shot films I've seen in quite some time. As Avery's psychosis deepens, he takes the traditional family values of raising a good son and brings them to the extreme, truly becoming the nightmare definition of what the American father archetype is.It's a fascinating study by Ray, with one hell of an ending. Ray uses an interesting technique of blending tones in the final act that I found left a strong impression. A dark, terrifying experience of a father trying to sacrifice his son turns into a rather caricature-esque romp of a fight between him and a co-worker. The ending appears happy at first, but when it sits with you it becomes more chilling than anything else in the picture. The blissful, serene image of the American family coming together again is contrasted with this sensation that the experiences the film put them through could in all likelihood just repeat themselves again the moment the camera stops rolling.

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.