SYNOPSICS
Bigger Than Life (1956) is a English movie. Nicholas Ray has directed this movie. James Mason,Barbara Rush,Walter Matthau,Robert F. Simon are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1956. Bigger Than Life (1956) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
Schoolteacher and family man Ed Avery, who's been suffering bouts of severe pain and even blackouts, is hospitalized with what's diagnosed as a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, Ed agrees to an experimental treatment: doses of the hormone cortisone. Ed makes a remarkable recovery, and returns home to his wife, Lou, and their son, Richie. He must keep taking cortisone tablets regularly to prevent a recurrence of his illness. But the "miracle" cure turns into its own nightmare as Ed starts to abuse the tablets, causing him to experience increasingly wild mood swings.
Same Actors
Bigger Than Life (1956) Reviews
Drugs And The Man
Nicholas Ray was one of the greatest directors to come out of Hollywood. His movies are always about something and that something has a cinematic flair that makes the experience thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Here is Cortisone the excuse for a slap in the face of a society that was getting more complacent and more spoiled with an avalanche of "new" things coming to overwhelm our daily lives. "We're dull, we're all dull" tells James Mason to his wife. Barbara Rush is superb as a Donna Reed type with a monster in the house. James Mason, a few years away from Lolita, also produced this rarely seen classic and gives a performance of daring highs. Highly recommended to movie lovers everywhere.
Best Manic Depressive portrayal
A fast moving gutsy view of what happens within a family when one member becomes manic, in this case from prescription drug addiction/ abuse. A subject that only became widely talked about years and years after this groung breaking film. Pointed out as the last film director Ray made that was set in "modern" times. The end of a cycle for him and one that was personal to Ray who struggled with addictions and troubled home life. There are two other reviewers who need a bit of a lashing. One innocently enough thinks that Barbara Rush, is Barbara Bel Geddes. Another one thinks the situation of the home craziness being kept at home is wrong and unreal of dated. Sorry Charlie, you've got some of your facts about the plot wrong and you've never seen this kind of craziness. I've personally seen this kind of Manic behavior in real life and this is one of the best, probably the best representation of it ever on the screen, including the religious mania aspects. If you find these aspects funny, they are in their horrible absurdity, very true to the way these manias attach themselves to Manic Depressive behavior. This movie mostly concentrates on the manic side of it. Definitely worth seeing on the big screen or in widescreen. James Mason is a good as he ever was, and he was awfully good many times. This is a great movie on many levels and his performance is one of the best put on film. What restraints were forced on the movie by the era it was made in, actually make it better and more scary than a film which can show vomiting and other drug side effects. This is psychologically horrifying. This emotional craziness is grim enough on its own and makes it all about the drama of the situation rather than the hype and tabloid parts. The scenes with the son dealing with his own father's behavior are especially unsettling and moving. The whole cast is good. Matthau fans will find him perhaps not getting to show all he can do here,but he's good as the buddy character. Pretty much everything works in this film, you can pull symbols out of it if you want, there are plenty to find, but it plays out as fascinating reality. This films reputation is good, but it needs to be more widely seen.
Terrifying
This is an excellent movie. I saw it once, and I never wish to see it again. I grew up in a household like this, only there was never a solution to my father's mania, depression, and incredible anger. About all I can say about Mr Mason's performance, and that of Ms Rush, is that they could have been my parents, and I could have been that kid. It never got to the point where I was offered up like Isaac, but the rest of it was right, right down to the speech where the father condemns all children because they're ignorant. I'd heard that one. His wife was helpless; they all are. I do not know where the screenwriters got their dialog, but I hope they didn't learn it the way I did. As it happened, I was terrified and transfixed while watching it, only calming down after the father realized that something was wrong, and vowed to correct it, and there was a means of correcting it. When the movie was over--I don't know if I watched it in the theater or on TV--I had to go home, where there was still rage, and no solution to it. I would have been nine years old. There was a time that I wanted my parents to see that movie, in the hope that they'd realize that this was how they acted, and stop it. It never happened. They were divorced years later. My father was angry and crazy right up to the day he died three years ago. My mother, in her nursing home in Cleveland, maintains that I must be making it all up. M Kinsler
Great 1950s Subversive Cinema!
This film, much like the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, has far more going on than meets the eye. James Mason's character, after getting whacked out of Cortizone (a "Miracle Drug") indeed becomes hysterical and abusive. But he was made ill in the first place by the strain caused his intensely driven lifestyle, where he kept two jobs to finance his family's social and financial ascent. What the viewer has to watch for is what his character says during his cortizone-induced delusions. His criticisms of his wife, kid, PTA and society in general are over-the-top, but essentially valid. It's a classic narrative device: by allowing a main character a way out of societal responsibility and place (In this case, being bombed on Cortizone), he is allowed to comment on and criticize American society directly without actually threatening the status quo. and in the case of 1950s America, that's a monolithic status quo to criticize.
Happened to me, very real movie!
Possible spoilers! I saw this movie years ago, it comes on tv very seldom. The movie is about a teacher who starts taking cortisone and starts acting nuts. Well the same thing happened to me, but I forgot about this movie and connecting it with the drug I was taking. I was put on a massive dose of Prednisone(a cortisone..steriod) and after a while I thought even though I was feeling better I was yelling and screaming at everyone. Including my mother. I had no idea I was acting this way for a while. To top it off I was angry all of the time and could hardly go out of the house. I saw the movie while this was going on and realized it was the same medicine I was taking. As crazy as this movie seems it really happens. I felt I was in James Mason's characters head and knew exactly what he was feeling. And the way his family and friends were acting mirrored the looks I was getting too. I was warned that the medicine will make you gain weight and there is a possibility of high sugar counts but not the mood swings. One thing you do not become addicted to the medicine but because it works so well you are afraid to stop taking it. You actually have to be weaned off. And that is a very hard thing to do. I believe Jerry Lewis was in the hospital for months getting weaned of this drug. This movie actually saved me and my sanity. Because while looking at it I realized this is how I was acting. I wish it was on DVD. I am sure if people are warned ahead of time that if you take this medicine for a while you will go nuts and become depressed people will not take it. This movie should be seen by all people who have a chronic illness where prednisone is part of their regiment. I think this movie was made because cortisone..steriods has these terrible side affects and Nick Ray wanted to get the info out there. plain and simple. I don't believe it has any deep seeded psychological message. This movie is more a docu-drama then just a thriller drama. I do know it is not about drug addiction because one does not become addicted to cortisone. Also I do believe it is a warning about anabolic steroids which is also in the same family as cortisone. Good movie.