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Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Truly Dreadful Film

The acting in this movie is really good.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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!

Bigger than Life (1956)Tightly made, vividly acted film about a contemporary crisis--the use and abuse of a new "miracle" drug. Watching James Mason suffer, and then make other people suffer, and then face the final bells of his life, is half the movie. He's such a uniquely subtle and powerful actor (at the same time), always filled with poise and a whiff of kindly diffidence. In a way, this is a precursor to the recent movie idea in "Limitless," where a drug makes you "bigger than life," though this is no fantasy. The drug here is cortisone, ingested orally. It had been understood as a natural (adrenal gland) steroid hormone and was manufactured (by Merck) and on the market by around 1950. And by 1956 when this movie came out it was considered a new kind of penicillin, but rather than just be an antibiotic, it seemed to just make you stronger against all kinds of ailments, especially those that involved swelling of some kind.Director Nicholas Ray does his usual wonders with interpersonal drama and makes this quite believable, as well as dramatic, and Joe MacDonald does his usual wonders with the camera-work. The writing, too, is crisp and believable (both Ray and Mason helped with the screenplay). In all, it's a top shelf production and a great story.But it fails somehow to be a great film, and I think the main reason is the hook to the plot, about the wonder drug, is a little too neatly packaged, with a few scenes that are almost like public service announcements. We sort of know before we are "supposed" to know that it's going to go bad--the clues go beyond foreshadowing--and so when we find out we are right, the edge is off of the narrative. Only the very end is left hanging, though you figure, with Merck keeping an eye on things, that events really can't go too wrong. According to Wikipedia, the American response at the time was shock and the movie did poorly (I guess because it looked like an attack on the nuclear family, such was the 1950s). But the critics loved it then and like it now. A movie this well made is still a thrill to watch for all the small things--Walter Matthau in a caricatured side role as the good Uncle, the psychological effects as manifest in Mason, and even the glimpse into the attitude toward medicine at the time. I don't think it's a typical reaction to cortisone, however (from what I've read)--this is a particular case where some inherent manic-depression is triggered, and exaggerated. It would be interesting to see this re-calibrated and filmed again in modern times, but with the subtlety here, the destruction of an ordinary family without shameless excess.

This is one pretty well directed and acted out movie, that however suffers from a story that feels far from ever being a likely one and the way it presents and unfolds itself just didn't do much for me.You could say that this movie is being too much of a melodrama, that focuses on a worst-case scenario, that however is so unlikely that, to me, the movie falls flat with its drama and emotions, during the movie its most climatic moments. To be frank, the story seemed totally silly, when a normal man starts to go slowly mental, after starting to take a new drug, against a life treating illness he suffers from. It's not only far from likely that a thing like this could ever happen, as gets portrayed in this movie but the whole way all of the characters react to the situation and try to cope with it are just far from likely and come mostly across as very silly. Yes, this is also for some part due to the fact that this movie is an outdated one, though I would imaging that people back in 1956 already had more common sense as well. The wife just comes across as incredibly weak and naive, for instance.So no, this movie really didn't do much for me with any of its emotions but it's still a movie that remains a well made one and also does feature some good moments in it. The entire idea behind this movie remains quite interesting and daring for its time as well but I just feel that the overall execution of it is definitely lacking.I often really love a Nicholas Ray movie, or I end up being very disappointed by it. I'm still willing to give this movie the benefit of the doubt because it still remains an overall well made movie, that just didn't had a very likely script to work with. It also still remains a movie that at times is lacking in its pace and its build up, which also causes some of the movie its drama to fall flat. Perhaps if the movie had been a bit longer, the build up and the eventual pay off of the movie would had worked out a lot better, though it would had probably provided the movie as well with some more pacing problems.Also the actors did really their best. James Mason was a great leading man for this movie and Walter Matthau also shows up, in one of his earlier movie roles. Still funny to see how James Mason always keeps up his thick English accent in American movies, like he simply didn't care.Nothing about this movie made me hate it but it's also too flawed to love it really.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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.