ThiefHott Too much of everything

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Timothy Shary This little-known movie caught me by surprise, for all kinds of reasons, not the least being Nicholas Ray's awkward adventure into Douglas Sirk territory. More so, the story's focus on the now-more-timely topic of prescription drug addiction is captivating to see from a perspective 60 years later. As a piece of post-war cultural history, it is compelling, dealing as it does with doubts about medicine and concerns about mental illness. As a movie though, I was distracted by its stiff production and histrionic message. It sure is strange enough to keep your attention in any case.

SnoopyStyle Ed Avery (James Mason) is a school teacher with loving wife Lou (Barbara Rush) and son Richie. Pat Wade and Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau) are his friends fellow teachers. He starts blacking out from terrible pains. Hospital doctors diagnose him with a rare disease and give him experimental cortisone treatment. He makes a remarkable recovery and given cortisone tablets to take. His personality starts to change and he begins to abuse the pills.The subject matter of prescription drug abuse is prescient although the madness is sometimes reminiscent of the old educational films of the dangers of marijuana. The 50's nuclear family does keep this mired in an old fashion style. Nevertheless, it is very admirable to see this issue tackled. The widescreen CinemaScope does something interesting to the interior scenes. When the walls on both sides of the room can be seen, it pulls the audience inside the rooms. The characters and their story becomes even more immediate.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Nicholas Ray (In a Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause), it was later that I heard this film was a melodrama, and it featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I had to see it. Basically Ed Avery (A Star Is Born's James Mason, also producing) is the schoolteacher and family man who is suddenly struck by a series of increasing pains and blackouts, and in hospital it is confirmed that he has a inflammation of the arteries, called polyarteritis nodosa. He is at first told he may have only months to live, which upsets him, his wife Lou (Barbara Rush) and their son Richie (Christopher Olsen), but then they decide to try and experimental hormone drug, cortisone, to see if it will relieve and eventually eliminate the pain, and it seems to work. The doctors tell Ed he will have to take the cortisone tablets indefinitely if he wants prevent the pain and illness returning, and at home he makes a remarkable recovery, returning to his regular routine and home life. However signs start to show that this "miracle cure" has affects on Ed's personality and behaviour, as he starts to misuse and overtake them, causing nightmarish reactions. The drugs are causing him to have constant mood swings, irrational temper, and ultimately hideous and psychotic abuse with violence towards Lou and Richie, threatening their safety. Lou tries ways to get him to take less, or completely rid of the cortisone from her husband, including trying to get his friend, school caretaker Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau) to help, but this only angers Ed much more. The drugs are eventually taken away from him and he restrained and put into hospital so that the drug affects can lessen and he can get back to his old self, and thankfully in the end he recovers, with no memory of his actions, and the doctors insist he will take much smaller doses in future, but Ed, Lou and Richie hug in relief. Also starring Robert F. Simon as Dr. Norton, Roland Winters as Dr. Ruric, Rachel Stephens as Nurse and Rusty Lane as Bob LaPorte. Mason gives a truly powerful performance as the at first mild-mannered and kind man who completely flips to become a scary, bully like, psychotic, megalomaniac monster towards his family, and Rush is perfect capturing the innocent fear and terror towards him, the bright colour scheme definitely works to create the striking scenes and feeling of unease, it is a must see psychological drama. Very good!

JoeytheBrit This must have been something of a shocker when it was first released back in the 50s because some later scenes – as Mason's psychosis really takes hold - are still powerful today. It's faintly curious, then, that Bigger Than Life isn't as well known as you might expect for what is something of a trailblazer.Mason plays Ed Avary, an average Joe ('Dull' is his self-description). He was briefly a high-school football hero and appears too intelligent for his modest job and home (a bit like George Bailey, in a way) but seems happy enough with his lot: he loves his family, and is kind to fellow colleagues – whether taxi drivers or schoolteachers. But when Ed begins suffering from crippling pains, his doctors diagnose a nasty case of phenopharbomedicalasosis (or something). Needless to say, this isn't the best news Ed has had that year, and his only chance of staying alive beyond the next six months is to stay regularly dosed up on cortisone. The trouble is Ed keeps forgetting he's already taken a pill and ends up undergoing a frightening psychological transformation into a manic-depressive gripped by religious mania and an overwhelming desire to teach his son maths as the drugs begin to consume him.Aspects of this film are inevitably dated, and it's let down by the final five minutes (today, a director might be tempted to end it when Ed's troubled wife and son enter his hospital room, leaving the audience to wonder what they'll find beyond), but it's still a mightily impressive piece of work. Ed's tailspin into manic-depression is necessarily accelerated by the modest running time, but director Nicholas Ray and his writers (who included, at some point or other, Gavin Lambert, Clifford Odets and leading man Mason) give plenty of signs of the direction Mason's madness will take from the off (talk of Caesar and Colossus, pictures and maps of countries from around the world on the walls of his modest home, etc). Some of the symbolism is a little over the top – cracked mirrors, dark shadows, Ed framed by the cold unyielding lines of the lamp on his desk – but at other times Ray creates just the right effect (compare the comparative sizes of Ed's and his wife's shadow as she tries to coax him out of teaching his son maths like some petty tyrant).The domestic scenes are quite unsettling in their mingling of the routine with the frighteningly off-kilter. Ed plays ball with his son – but he makes him play the same move over and over again, and does nothing to hide his disappointment when junior fails to come up to scratch; dad helps junior with his homework – compulsively, obsessively, and at the forfeit of meals; prayers at the evening meal are followed by a tense inquisition into why a glassful of milk is missing from the pitcher. And so on. It all builds to an overwrought (and rapid) but believable conclusion until his best friend Walter Matthau socks him on the jaw and puts him in hospital.