Bigger Than Life [Blu-ray]

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a typical (though idealized) 1950s husband and father who is facing serious health problem. To save his life, he begins taking the controversial new drug Cortisone which soon brings about a major - and quite shocking - personality transformation.

James Mason is superb in this role. At first, he's charming and lovable, but gradually morphs into a horrifying monster. He had me utterly convinced he was really vile and very dangerous. Barbara Rush gives a good performance as the steadfast housewife and mother who loves him, no matter how grotesque he becomes. Walter Matthau is likable in a supporting role as Ed's co-worker. The movie was directed by Nicholas Ray ("Rebel Without a Cause") and had some surprisingly blunt and realistic dialogue for 1956.

This story is even more relevant today with so much drug abuse and dependence. Mason's transformation from `Father Knows Best' to `Mr. Hyde' is utterly believable and frightening. Good movie.

So interesting film, that made clear american people have no trust in the State and can't hope have help from it. Difficult to understand on this first level for European and Canadian people; but on a second degree the critique is perfectly modern. This is one of the very good film of Nicholas Ray (Rebel without a cause, In a lonely place, Johnny Guitar), though ignored at the time of its release. James Mason is very very good in the role of a teacher and father, whose treatment for sickness transforms him into a kind of monster ready to kill his child (an american sub-urban family version of Jekyll and Hyde) that despite an non credible happy ending, but because of it, introduces us in the unhappy universe middle-class american family, long before American Beauty.

It is difficult to evaluate a film like Bigger Than Life. There is so much more to it than meets the eye, yet it isn't necessarily that entertaining. Starring and produced by James Mason (he also had an uncredited role in writing the screenplay), this film comes with a high critical reputation, some going as far as to say it is director Nicholas Ray's masterpiece. This film at times can be very good, but it certainly not a masterpiece in my opinion. If one should seek a directorial masterpiece by Nicholas Ray, one should view In a Lonely Place.

When this film was released it did not do very well at the box, and also it was criticized for being an attack on the family. The film is heavy handed in its melodrama, which is about James Mason's character's addiction to cortisone, at the time a miracle drug that saves his life but inevitably makes him dangerously psychotic. The film relates the impact this has on his wife and son and on his life generally.

The interesting thing about this film is how it reflects the culture of the time. The film makes subtle comments about a myriad of issues: drug addiction, mental illness and its social taboo; the condescending way the medical profession deals with patients and their families; the role of women in the home; suburbia and consumerism; and parenting. These issues are not apparent unless one seriously reflects upon it, and consequently if one sees this film purely for its entertainment value, it is an average film.

I imagine this film was seen as an attack on the family due to the way it portrays this particular family in such a sterile way. This film was made during the baby boom, yet this is a one child (who is about 10 yrs old) family with a stay at home mom. The wife does not appear satisfied or empowered by the fact she is forbidden by her husband to work outside the home, even though this is a small family with one child soon to be a teenager. There appears to be a certain emotional sterility between the characters of James Mason and Barbara Rush, who plays the wife and mother, almost a chasm of frustrated intimacy. Looking at this couple, it was difficult to imagine any emotional and physical intimacy between them, though there was genuine love that was struggling to become more intimate.

The DVD commentary argues that this film was a critique of the so-called conformity and boredom of the development of suburbia and consumerism. I think this is misguided, since I disagree with the premise that suburbia and consumerism are all that bad. Coming out of the Great Depression and WWII, and even today for most of the people of the world or those who live in concrete jungles, suburbia and consumerism don't look that bad. Suburbia offers recreational and cultural activities that were not available to the masses prior to its emergence. As for social conformity, this exists in any social situation, not just the suburbia of the 1950's. If anything, the film in my opinion should not be seen as a critique of the material well being found in suburbia, but how the emotional and spiritual values of a family are compromised when a genuine concern for the other takes a back seat to individualism and materialism as an ultimate value rather than a blessing.