BIGGER THAN LIFE

When a friendly, successful suburban teacher and father (James Mason, in one of his most indelible roles) is prescribed cortisone for a painful, possibly fatal affliction, he grows dangerously addicted to the experimental drug, resulting in his transformation into a psychotic and ultimately violent household despot. Nicholas Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE is among the most radical examples of what may be the most radical genre in American cinema: the small-town melodrama. Though long considered unworthy of serious attention – aimed as it was at the disregarded female audience – this genre is single-mindedly concerned with the nightmare world of compulsory heterosexuality and capitalist striving. And BIGGER THAN LIFE, one of Ray’s best and most overlooked films, brilliantly distorts the American dream.

James Mason brings a smoldering intensity to his portrayal of a modest man suddenly transformed by a manic, medically-induced hunger for success and for all the trappings of the “good life”– money, status, power – that seem within his grasp, although for a terrible price. And for director Ray, the drugs in the film are simply a way of bringing to the surface tendencies that already exist within both Mason and the world he inhabits. Seldom has the idea of the bourgeois home as prison been pursued with such remorseless logic. BIGGER THAN LIFE casts a long shadow over America’s cinema.

“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. BIGGER THAN LIFE is a profoundly upsetting exposure of middle-class aspirations because it virtually defines madness as taking those values seriously.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum

“The cosmic scope of the film’s blasphemy has yet to be fully appreciated. Somewhere in suburbia, the order of creation is turning over.” - B. Kite