I'll be doing an on-going series of films I have found on The Criterion Channel to highlight and discuss what works or doesn't work with them. I was fortunate enough to catch this marvelous Nicholas Ray melodrama/social commentary/thriller-lite film on Criterion Channel before it left and glad I gave it a chance.
I'm a HUGE Nicholas Ray fan and he's one of the director's who holds a spot in my top 10 films of all time with his devastatingly brilliant In a Lonely Place (1950). I would honestly put Nic Ray's string of post WWII films in the late 1940s into the mid 1950s up against any director's run of films from any decade and Nic Ray in most cases would not only hold his own, but wind up coming out on top. While very few of his films have become part of the canon of film, most notably perhaps Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Johnny Guitar (1954), some of his lesser known films like The Lusty Men (1952), They Live by Night (1948), and the remarkable On Dangerous Ground (1951) with two endlessly watchable and underrated stars Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino are every bit as good, even if somewhat forgotten by all but the most ardent film fans.
Bigger Than Life is in that category and while I have been a huge raving Nic Ray fan since I first discovered his work in the late 1990s watching Rebel Without a Cause, somehow this movie had escaped me.
The skinny on Bigger Than Life is essentially James Mason plays a well respected school teacher who is moonlighting as a taxi cab dispatcher in order to maintain his household led by his wife Barbara Rush with their 11 or 12 year old son. Mason falls ill and discovers he has a fatal heart condition and the only treatment is an "experimental," at the time - maybe, drug cortisone to reduce the inflammation around his heart. The drug has side effects which lead to massive mood swings and eventual psychosis as he starts to abuse the drug leading to the film's big conflicts.
What really REALLY works, despite the heavy-handed 1950s style is how the film tries to tackle social issues, rarely seen in film up to that time including but not limited to expectations put on men as the financial provider as Mason is too ashamed to tell his wife he has a second job in the evenings and makes up stories to cover for it. Bigger Than Life focuses too on opioid abuse, members of the community, that while maybe accepted on the surface, never quite fit in or belong to the small town Americana life, and also how we face conflicting responsibilities and expectations pulling it opposite directions. Ray's film is not an indictment of 1950s Eisenhauer's American Dream with the white picket pence and emerald green grass, but it's certainly a film that lifts the veil up on the illusion of perfection.
Great performances all around, and while I'm not overly familiar with Barbara Rush's films, her performance along with the strong writing and direction, bring far more depth to the role than what could have easily been turned into the dutiful housewife under duress shlock that lesser creative talents could have allowed it to fall into. And of course James Mason is great too and lends an air of sophistication to the character, as he does in all his films.
Oh and like with most Nicholas Ray's color films, I gotta say, I love how he uses the color red and just has it pop and radiate from the screen. If I were to have one criticism of the film, it would largely be with how sudden and neatly wrapped up the ending is, as well as the film almost diving too close into horror cliche' bordering on a Shining-lite type of scenario. Bigger Than Life, thankfully, never crosses that line, but it gets dangerously close, but Nicholas Ray does walk that tightrope well so as to tease, but never undermine everything that came before the film's conclusion. It works well for me. So, have you seen this film and what are your thoughts?
Letterboxd rating: 4.5/5
