Bigger Than Life (1956) (1956)

93% of critics liked it
(27 reviews)
83% of users liked it
(1,387 ratings)

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 man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him. Avery is… More 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 man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him. Avery is successful and well liked in his community, but he is over-extended in his pursuit of the American dream -- he secretly works a second job to earn extra money, and doesn't dare break stride, despite the increasingly painful physical spasms that he suffers. He collapses one day, and the doctors inform him that he suffers from an arterial disease that will probably give him less than a year to live. But they also offer him one hope, with treatment using cortisone, which was then a new, not-fully-tested drug. Avery makes a seemingly full recovery and returns to work, but it soon becomes clear that he's not the same -- he has a new, cavalier attitude toward money, and then Lou becomes alarmed over his expressions of rage over seemingly insignificant annoyances. 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). And 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. And his obsession w ith forcing Richie to live up to his full potential soon turns into a much darker fixation. 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 drug addiction and fact-based psychological unhingement into a suburban American setting, it was a 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. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 35 min.
Directed By: Nicholas Ray
Genres: Drama

In Theaters: Aug 2, 1956 Wide
On DVD: Mar 23, 2010

Critic Reviews

Variety Staff, Variety
James Mason has picked a powerful subject for his first 20th-Fox production and delivers it with quite a bit of dramatic distinction in carrying out the supervisory duties and as the male lead.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
It's hard to think of another Hollywood picture with more to say about the sheer awfulness of 'normal' American family life during the 50s.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times
Those who remember the creeping terror and eeriness of Mr. Roueché's real-life yarn will be sorry to learn that there is little terror or eeriness in the film.
Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl
...an amazing critique of conventional 1950s morality...
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
A masterful melodrama whose aesthetic beauty works in service of a stinging social critique.
Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...is a dark cautionary tale about suburban ennui that feels like an unacknowledged antecedent to the AMC TV series Breaking Bad.
Kelly Vance, East Bay Express
The epitome of a social problem film, in which the "crisis of conformism" bursts open in every single tension-producing frame.
Matthew Sorrento, Film Threat
[D]rop the 'Reefer' and call this film 'Cortisone Madness.'
Gabe Leibowitz, Film and Felt
It's all horrifying, and its eerie resemblance to the McCarthy-esque paranoia and fear that swept the nation makes Bigger Than Life extremely powerful.
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk
a surprisingly expressionistic horrorshow, a frightening and indelible portrait of the nuclear family turned into a hellish emotional torture chamber
Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
The mirrors are watching you in Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life, one of the most effective horror movies of the '50s.
Sean Axmaker, Seanax.com
The film is a tricky mix of glossy Technicolor realism and elevated expressionism that feels both marvelously classic and aggressively modern.
Peter Canavese, Groucho Reviews
The sort-of picture-perfection of the suburban home...is a tenuous cover for the unpredictability of life, the short distance between the American Dream and the American nightmare. [Blu-ray]
Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix
Ed's vision is demented and distorted, and yet, Ray insinuates, doesn't his protagonist, in an odd way, see through the smug mediocrity that is 1950s America?
Leo Goldsmith, Reverse Shot
Always a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns.
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
A commercial flop at the time, Ray's 1956 film, made right after Rebel Without Cause, is nonethless one of his most poignant and visually compelling critiques of American suburban life, featuring James Mason in top form.
David Fear, Time Out New York
The suits wanted a torn-from-the-headlines melodrama; what they got was the director at his expressionistic best, subverting the suburban fantasy and leaving nothing but tattered gray flannel and scorched earth in his wake.
Philip French, Observer [UK]
It was as much undervalued and misunderstood as the films Douglas Sirk was making at the time.

Read all 18 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

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Featured Audience Ratings

Bob S

I liked it. Actually, I really, really liked it. Give me more. Damn it, I need MORE!
Stella D

wow. james mason is seriously frightening as he slowly loses his grip on reality due to prescription drug addiction. a great look under the idyllic facade of the 50's
erika b

this film made me get n the edge of my seat.
Michael G

Bigger Than Life is a movie I've looked forward to for a few years since seeing Martin Scorsese's Journey Through American Movies. Seeing James Mason in the throes of psychosis about to murder his son and claiming GOD WAS WRONG for not having Abraham kill Isaac was enough to… More
Bigger Than Life is a movie I've looked forward to for a few years since seeing Martin Scorsese's Journey Through American Movies. Seeing James Mason in the throes of psychosis about to murder his son and claiming GOD WAS WRONG for not having Abraham kill Isaac was enough to add this to my must see list. Bigger Than Life is a hell of a lot like a Douglas Sirk movie with less saturated colors and slightly less melodrama. Mason is great as the All-American dad who goes nuts after getting addicted to cortisone and Walter Matthau as his plot device/friend. As good a job as Mason did in his decent into madness, Nicolas Ray's direction was the real standout here. Worth the ride if you can get your hands on it.
Walter M

[font=Century Gothic]In "Bigger than Life," there are two things that Ed Avery(James Mason), a schoolteacher, is hiding from his wife Lou(Barbara Rush). The first is that he moonlights a couple of nights a week at a taxi company as a dispatcher. He lies because he feels that… More
[font=Century Gothic]In "Bigger than Life," there are two things that Ed Avery(James Mason), a schoolteacher, is hiding from his wife Lou(Barbara Rush). The first is that he moonlights a couple of nights a week at a taxi company as a dispatcher. He lies because he feels that she might think this is below somebody who once attended the prestigious Boston Latin School. The second is the pain he has been feeling for the past six months until he collapses one night. Doctors are at a loss for what is ailing him but eventually diagnose a rare ailment that can be kept at bay with cortisone, a hormone, prescribed four times a day.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]Directed by Nicholas Ray, "Bigger than Life" is an old fashioned melodrama that has less to do with addiction to prescribed medications than it does as a warning against playing god, especially to scientists. Ed is a perfectly humble man until the cortisone treatment which is trumpeted as a miracle cure. After he begins abusing the drug, he develops a psychosis and suddenly his old life is no longer good enough for him. Of special attention is the climax of the film and what sets it off.[/font]
Chris B

Amazing symbolic and the case of psychosis gets to insane levels nearing the end of the film making tension build throughout the movie. Not the easiest film to watch but one definitely worth watching! Highly Recommended!
Mike T

An unnerving, fervently cinematic masterpiece from Nicholas Ray.
Quinto W

The film is a striking portrait of the rampant paranoia running through peoples mind in the 1950s, but James Mason's powerful performance as a man reaching breaking point and Barbara Rush as the put-upon wife can a strike a chord with audiences anytime today.

Read all 8 featured audience ratings

Cast

            James Mason as Ed Avery

            Barbara Rush as Mrs. Lou Avery

            Walter Matthau as Wally Gibbs

            Robert F. Simon as Dr. Norton

            Christopher Olsen as Richie Avery

            Roland Winters as Dr. Rurich

            Rusty Lane as La Porte

            Rachel Stephens as Nurse

            Kipp Hamilton as Pat Wade

            Betty Caulfield as Mrs. La Porte

            Virginia Carroll as Mrs. Jones

            Renny McEvoy as Mr. Jones

            Billy Jones as Mr. Byron

            Lee Aaker as Joe

            Jerry Mathers as Freddie

            Portland Mason as Nancy

            Natalie Masters as Mrs Tyndal

            Richard Collier as Milkman

            Lewis Charles as Dr MacLennan

            Gus Schilling as Druggist

            Alex Frazer as Clergyman

            Mary Carver as Saleslady

            Eugenia Paul as Saleslady

            Nan Dolan as Dr. Norton's Nurse

            William Schallert as Pharmacist
See full cast

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