HotToastyRag After losing the Oscar to Marlon Brando at the 1955 Oscar ceremony, James Mason wanted another shot at winning the gold, so he took the highly emotional role in Bigger Than Life. He plays a terminally ill family man who takes an experimental drug, cortisone, as the only chance to prolong his life. At first, he's filled with vigor and love of life, but when he starts taking more cortisone than his dosage, the drug takes a toll on his mind.Barbara Rush plays his not-so-long-suffering wife, and her character is written very inconsistently. She's quick to accuse him of having an affair, doesn't really crumble when the doctors tell her James is terminal, and the very day he comes home from spending months in the hospital she loses her temper and yells at him-yet she's supposed to be looked at as a devoted wife?The entire time James Mason was acting like a maniac, I kept thinking of his poor son and how much therapy he'd need when he grew up. For that matter, the actor himself, Christopher Olsen, might have needed therapy after acting in such an emotionally abusive film. I have a terrible weakness for not being able to stand it when little kids cry, especially boys, so there were a couple of times in the movie when I looked away from the screen.Bigger Than Life is not the best movie to start out with if you've never seen a James Mason movie. Yes, he looks really handsome, but he's really unlikable. After starting the movie all smiles and laughter and happiness, he quickly turns into a psychotic, cruel monster, turning the audience against him. Also, given the very uncomfortable subject matter, it's not hard to see why he wasn't nominated for another Oscar. The film criticizes the medical establishment, education, and religion; one can only imagine how uncomfortable 1956 audiences felt watching it.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to upsetting scenes involving a child, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

gambted Admittedly, if this movie had been made today, it would be much different. However, since it was made in the 1950's, the family had a "Leave It To Beaver" feel about it--a mother at home and in a dress while doing housework, a son that adores his father and wants to be just like him, and a father doing his best to support his family. However, when the father, a school teacher, passes out from intense pain, he finds out that he has rare disease that is fatal. The doctor, though, has an experimental drug that he would like to use. The father agrees and he is put on cortisone. The experiment works and the father is able to return to teaching. Eventually, he becomes addicted and even psychotic which leads to some serious threats to the family.I did not intend to watch this movie when it came on, but as it progressed I wanted to see how the film would conclude. At times, I felt frustrated that the wife did not do more to stop her husband from doing harm to himself and his family. But then, it was the 50's, an era that women were portrayed very differently from today.

kenjha A teacher with a fatal disease is given a new lease on life thanks to cortisone, but he becomes addicted to the drug, leading to bizarre side effects. The film gets off to a rather dreary start, but perks up once the side effects start manifesting themselves. Mason's put downs of his wife are quite funny ("It's a shame I didn't marry someone who was my intellectual equal"). As the wife, Rush is intended to be portrayed as strong and loving but comes across as a clueless idiot who lets things spiral out of control instead of taking charge when Mason starts losing his mind. Mathau is good as a gym teacher. Ray does little to shape the material, settling for some cheesy effects instead.

funkyfry Is there such a thing as a "normal man"? And if there were, how would he react to extraordinary circumstances such as a life-or-death struggle? Superficially, this film directed by Nick Ray from Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum's story seems to fit an exploration of these kind of ideas. Within the film's mechanics however is a story that sows more doubt into the soil of middle America -- we feel at times as if the psychotic delusions that have overtaken our schoolteacher family man Ed Avery (James Mason) might actually have more truth to them than the bland and self-consciously "dull" life he previously shared with his reserved and dutiful wife Lou (Barbara Rush).That's not to say that the addictive effects of cortisone are all beneficial, either to himself or his family. The substance saves his life and then slowly turns him into a psychotic. But along the way, he punctures through the malaise of the suburbs almost like a grown-up version of director Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" -- throwing into question the complacent attitudes he finds around him. As a teacher, he begins to realize that education is slipping because teachers are told to bolster students' confidence and esteem instead of making them realize how little they know; this is just one of the pearls he drops that we as a culture would have been well-advised to pay attention to. The messenger may have been quite confused, but his message comes in clear at times.At other times, his rigor when focused on his son takes on a form of abuse that would surely crush the boy's spirit, so we can see that some of the Mason character's ideas have been already taken too far. It's as if the film is saying that the moment of insight is just a fleeting one separating two chasms of confusion. There are only two states of being for our hero -- numbed contentment or delusional hyper-engagement. But in the transition between the two the movie seems to reach its peak of black humor and subdued drama, much more powerful for me than some of the moments later when his psychosis took a physical form. This film deserves to be seen in a double feature with "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." Or watched in a concert with Leonard Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti." It's amazing how these works of art were already psychoanalyzing the phenomenon of the suburbs itself. Is this a viable way of life? What kind of damage does it do to the human spirit, to be crammed in with so many others in a sort of simulation of wealth and luxury? For Ed Avery and his wife simply going into a different department store is a major social dilemma fraught with peril. How could they be expected to deal with such a major crisis as a drug addiction? What about the wife particularly, wanting to cling to the very last moment to her husband's prerogative? And the son so accustomed to trusting his judgment? Just as Avery's mental illness lays bare fundamental problems in his life and with his relationships, the film itself exposes weaknesses in the patriarchal and provincial spirit of the suburbs. Much like again "Rebel", this movie doesn't just typify the suburban scene and depicts its complexities -- if you want to see the 1960s as an explosion in American culture, this film is showing you that the fuse was already lit.