Bigger Than Life is an American DeLuxe Color CinemaScope film made in 1956 directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, about a school teacher and family man whose life spins out of control upon becoming addicted to cortisone.

The film co-stars Barbara Rush as his wife and Walter Matthau as his closest friend, a fellow teacher. Though it was a box-office flop upon its initial release,^[2] many modern critics hail it as a masterpiece and brilliant indictment of contemporary attitudes towards mental illness and addiction.^[3]

In 1963, Jean-Luc Godard named it one of the ten best American sound films ever made.^[4]

Bigger Than Life was based on a 1955 article by medical writer Berton Roueché in The New Yorker, titled “Ten Feet Tall”.^[5]

Plot summary

Schoolteacher and family man Ed Avery (James Mason), who has been suffering bouts of severe pain and even blackouts, is hospitalized with what is diagnosed as polyarteritis nodosa, a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, Ed agrees to an experimental treatment: doses of the hormone cortisone.

Ed makes a remarkable recovery. He returns home to his wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and their son, Richie (Christopher Olsen). He must keep taking cortisone tablets regularly to prevent a recurrence of his illness. But the “miracle” cure turns into a nightmare when Ed begins to misuse the tablets, causing him to experience wild mood swings and, ultimately, a psychotic episode which threatens the safety of his family.

Cast

Reception

Bigger Than Life was extremely controversial upon its release,^{[citation needed]} and it was not a financial success. Mason, who produced the film as well as starring in it, blamed its failure on its use of the then-novel widescreen CinemaScope format.^[2]

American critics panned the film, considering it melodramatic and heavyhanded.^[6] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it tedious, “dismal”, and “more pitiful than terrifying to watch”.^[7]

However, the film was popular with critics at the influential magazine Cahiers du cinéma. Jean-Luc Godard called it one of the ten best American sound films.^[4] Likewise, François Truffaut praised the film, noting the “intelligent, subtle” script, the “extraordinary precision” of Mason’s performance, and the beauty of the film’s CinemaScope photography.^[8]

Modern critics have pointed out Ray’s use of widescreen cinematography to depict the interior spaces of a family drama, rather than the open vistas typically associated with the format, as well as his use of extreme close-ups in portraying the main character’s psychosis and megalomania.^[9]

The film is also recognized for its multi-layered examination of the American nuclear family in the Eisenhower era. While the film can be read as a straightforward exposé on medical malpractice and the overuse of prescription drugs in modern American society,^[10] it has also been seen as a critique of consumerism, the male-dominated traditional family structure, and the claustrophobic conformism of suburban life.^[3][11][12]

Truffaut saw Ed’s drug-influenced speech to the parents of the parent-teacher association as having fascist overtones.^[13] The film has also been interpreted as an examination of masculinity and a leftist critique of the low salaries of public school teachers in the United States.^[14]

Notes

See also

• List of American films of 1956

References

• Basinger, Jeanine (2013). I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307962225.

• Cossar, Harper (2011). Letterboxed: The Evolution of Widescreen Cinema. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813126517.

• Halliwell, Martin (2013). Therapeutic Revolutions: Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1945-1970. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813560663.

• Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1997). Movies as Politics. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520918108.

• Schiebel, Will (2014). “Bigger Than Life: Melodrama, Masculinity, and the American Dream”. In Rybin, Steven; Schiebel, Will. Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground: Nicholas Ray in American Cinema. SUNY Press. ISBN 9781438449814.

• Solomon, Aubrey (1989). Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History. Scarecrow Press.

• Truffaut, François (2009). The Films In My Life. Da Capo Press. ISBN 9780786749720.

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