Bigger Than Life

A family drama set in 1950s America. Ed is a teacher. His salary is not enough and he works a second job in secret, taking taxi calls. The fatigue and the pain worsen and he goes to hospital. The diagnosis is a serious arterial disease. A drug new at the time is prescribed: cortisone. It works; the man feels better than he has in years. Then he starts increasing the dose himself. The change is slow: confidence first, then grandiosity, then cruelty towards everyone around him. He lectures the parents at school, belittles his wife and sets his son impossible standards. What the film is interested in is not the drug but the anger the man already carried. The cortisone brings it out, and the tension under middle-class life becomes visible. Visually the house turns into a prison: the colours harden, the shadows grow and the stairwell becomes a threat. James Mason plays Ed and also produced. Barbara Rush and Walter Matthau are in the cast. Nicholas Ray directed. It attracted no attention on release and was later counted among the hardest criticisms of the American family model. A strong example for anyone who likes classical Hollywood drama and social criticism. Before you watch, know this: the film shows threat inside a family directly and its last section is tense.