Bigger Than Life [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Nicholas Ray Nicholas Ray

Overview

Based on an article in the New Yorker, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life stars James Mason (who also produced the film) as elementary school teacher Ed Avery. A thoughtful, gentle, educated man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him, Avery is also successful in his work, respected by his principal and colleagues, and well liked in his community. But he is also over-extended in his pursuit of the American dream -- he secretly works a second job to earn extra money, and, much more seriously, doesn't dare break stride, despite the increasingly painful physical spasms that he suffers. He finally collapses one day, and after an extended series of tests the doctors inform him that he is suffering from a serious arterial disease. His doctors (Robert F. Simon, Roland Winters, Lewis Charles) tell him that he may well have less than a year to live, but also offer him one possible hope, with treatment using cortisone, which was then a new, not fully tested drug. Avery jumps at the chance and makes a gradual but seemingly full recovery. He returns to work a few weeks later, but it soon becomes clear that he's not the same -- the first sign of a problem is his new, cavalier attitude toward money, and then Lou becomes alarmed over his expressions of rage over seemingly insignificant annoyances and slights. And then he starts expressing himself in grand, exalted terms, first to Lou and then to his colleagues at school, including his closest friend, Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau); he couples this with a belittling attitude toward the students and, worse yet, their parents, and the goals of the school and of education in general. Avery's job is now in jeopardy, which is the only reason Lou and Wally keep quiet, lest they make matters in the Avery home worse than they already are. But matters only get worse when Wally determines that it is the cortisone -- which Ed has been taking in far greater doses than prescribed -- that is making him act this way. Presented with this information, Ed now expresses delusions of persecution concerning his best friend and his wife. And his obsession with forcing Richie to live up to his full potential soon turns into a much darker fixation, coupled with a grim twist in his mind on the Biblical sacrifice of Abraham. Lou finally tries to reach out for help before it is too late for all of them. Director Ray later offered regret over having used cortisone by name, as it was still not standard treatment and its benefits and drawbacks weren't known. But this did lend the movie a verisimilitude that was essential for what appeal it did hold for audiences. (Seven years later, screenwriter William Read Woodfield would incorporate Bigger Than Life's cortisone plot device into his script for the Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea episode Mutiny). Bigger Than Life's more immediate problem at the time lay in its broader plot -- with a story that brought addiction (of a kind) and fact-based psychological unhingement into a suburban American setting, it was a fairly daring subject for its time, for which audiences were unprepared in 1956. It was also one of a group of offbeat pictures that Mason produced as well as starred in.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/23/2010
UPC:	0715515054713
Original Release:	1956
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:35:00
Sales rank:	10,796

Special Features

Audio commentary featuring critic Geoff Andrew (The Films of Nicholas Ray); Profile of Nicholas Ray (1977), a half-hour television interview with the director; New video appreciation of Bigger Than Life with author Jonathan Lethem (Chronic City); New video interview with Susan Ray, widow of the director and editor of I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies; Theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Mason	Ed Avery,Nancy
Barbara Rush	Lou Avery
Walter Matthau	Wally Gibbs
Robert Simon	Dr. Norton
Christopher Olsen	Richie Avery
Roland Winters	Dr. Rurich
Rusty Lane	La Porte
Rachel Stephens	Nurse
Kipp Hamilton	Pat Wade
Betty Caulfield	Mrs. La Porte
Virginia Carroll	Mrs. Jones
Renny McEvoy	Mr. Jones
Bill Jones	Mr. Byron,Mr. Byron
Lee Aaker	Joe
Jerry Mathers	Freddie
Natalie Masters	Mrs. Tyndal
Richard Collier	Milkman
Lewis Charles	Dr. McLennan
John Monoghan	Cabby
Gus Schilling	Druggist
Alex Frazer	Clergyman
Mary McAdoo	Mrs. Edwards
Gladys Richards	Lab Nurse
David Bedell	X-ray Doctor
Ann Spencer	Nurse No. 2
Nan Dolan	Dr. Norton's Nurse
Mary Carver	Saleslady
Eugenia Paul	Saleslady
William Schallert	Actor

Technical Credits

Ray Kellogg	Special Effects
James Mason	Producer
Nicholas Ray	Director

Editorial Reviews

Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life never achieved the critical or popular success of his Rebel Without a Cause, released the previous year, but it holds up as an equally powerful look at the dark and troubling underside of life in a "normal" American family. While Rebel Without a Cause explored the impact of a weak and ineffectual father on a teenager struggling to assert his maturity and masculinity, Bigger Than Life examined the other side of a similar situation, as Ed Avery (James Mason) slowly mutates into an aggressively domineering father willing to murder a child who can't live up to his high standards. While on the surface Bigger Than Life is a warning about the use of untested and possibly dangerous drugs (Avery's psychosis is brought on by dangerously high dosages of cortisone, still in the experimental stages at the time), what's most memorable about the film is Mason's superbly modulated performance (one of the best of his career), in which he gradually transforms from a typical high school teacher and suburban dad into a megalomaniac who refuses to accept anything less than perfection from his students or his family -- even going so far to suggest he can do better than God in his judgment of his son's worth. Mason and Ray took the typically over-ambitious father who pesters Junior for good grades and a home run in his next little league game, and exaggerated him into something truly terrifying; if Rebel Without a Cause made suggested that juvenile delinquency could happen in a "good" home, Bigger Than Life went even farther in suggesting just how sinister a "good" home could be.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming