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BIGGER THAN LIFE

It's no secret that I like bad movies from the eighties. They're one of my favorite things. But lately I keep finding interesting films where I least expect them, and by that I mean really good movies from the fifties. A perfect example of this is Bigger Than Life, a brilliantly directed Nicholas Ray film about addiction, mental illness, and the insanity of the domestic situation of the fifties. A Cinemascope gem, bathed in that perfectly delicious artificial Color by Deluxe, this one delivers in composition and content and fifties madness.

Ed Avery, played by James Mason, gets some weird disease that causes him a lot of pain, and that will kill him if he doesn't take a magic pill that is fortunately available to him. But he starts taking it too much, and consequently he starts BUGGING OUT. His wife, son and close family friend played by Walter Matthau grapple helplessly with his escalating mental illness. Though Ed denies any ill effects from the magic pill, his doctor warns that "Sometimes we see it produce some pretty queer mental effects." Queer, like, say, very enthusiastically buying your wife dresses you can't afford? Abusing your son with vigorous football practice followed by vigorous math problem sets? Berating the milkman about how much the milk bottles jingle and jangle? Ed's madness is at times comic; his family's paralysis at dealing with it is horrific.

I suspect that a contemporary review of Bigger Than Life wouldn't look at the flaws of the domestic situation of post-war America as one of the core motifs of the movie, but it's inescapable in a modern viewing. It's the heart of the problem depicted. The sort of Feminine Mystique, institutionalized craziness of being a housewife that dictated that you defer to your man in all ways is really pushed to its warped limits when your guy becomes a LOONY who refuses to let your son eat and accuses you of getting it on with Walter Matthau and yet YOU STILL DO WHAT HE SAYS. The movie spotlights how these suffocating artificial constructs about the way relationships and finances and appearances were supposed to be effectively made it impossible for this family to cope with something as demanding as insanity. Either Barbara Rush's character's behavior is really representative of how a wife would've tried to deal with a nutjob husband back in the day, or she's just a major sap. I wonder.

Like Ray's more well known Rebel Without a Cause, in scene after scene of Bigger Than Life you can see the careful thought that went into staging the actors and placing the camera. Lights and shadows and camera angles are all very deliberately used. No detail or symbol is overlooked, from the broken bathroom mirror to the delightful choice that circus music blare from the TV at the height of Ed's psychosis, to an ominous red light at the hospital. We may as well just call it the crazy light. So if you're in the mood for some crazy (either of the pill popping or domestic oppression variety), or of you want to know whether the crazy light is on or off by the end of this tale, take a break from your own day to catch Bigger Than Life.