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Bigger Than Life
Directed by
Nicholas Ray
1956
1h 35m
Not Rated
Drama
7.4
91%
84%
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A seriously-ill schoolteacher becomes dependent on a "miracle" drug that begins to affect his sanity.
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Cast of Bigger Than Life
James Mason
Ed Avery
Barbara Rush
Lou Avery
Walter Matthau
Wally Gibbs
Robert F. Simon
Dr. Norton
Christopher Olsen
Richie Avery
Roland Winters
Dr. Ruric
Rusty Lane
Bob LaPorte
Rachel Stephens
Nurse
Kipp Hamilton
Pat Wade
Betty Caulfield
Mrs. LaPorte (uncredited)
Virginia Carroll
Mrs. Jones (uncredited)
Renny McEvoy
Mr. Jones (uncredited)
Billy Jones
Mr. Byron (uncredited)
Dee Aaker
Joe (uncredited)
Jerry Mathers
Freddie (uncredited)
Portland Mason
Nancy (uncredited)
Natalie Masters
Mrs. Tyndall (uncredited)
Richard Collier
Milkman (uncredited)
Lewis Charles
Mr. McLennan (uncredited)
Gus Schilling
Druggist (uncredited)
Alex Frazer
Clergyman (uncredited)
Mary McAdoo
Mrs. Edwards (uncredited)
Mary Carver
Saleslady (uncredited)
Eugenia Paul
Saleslady (uncredited)
Gladys Richards
Lab Nurse (uncredited)
David Bedell
X-Ray Doctor (uncredited)
Joseph Mell
Dispatcher (uncredited)
George Chester
Janitor (uncredited)
Bigger Than Life Reviews
New York Times
Bosley Crowther
Those who remember the creeping terror and eeriness of Mr. Rouech's real-life yarn will be sorry to learn that there is little terror or eeriness in the film.
Playback:stl
Sarah Boslaugh
...an amazing critique of conventional 1950s morality...
Lessons of Darkness
Nick Schager
A masterful melodrama whose aesthetic beauty works in service of a stinging social critique.
Film Threat
Matthew Sorrento
[D]rop the 'Reefer' and call this film 'Cortisone Madness.'
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Philip Martin
...is a dark cautionary tale about suburban ennui that feels like an unacknowledged antecedent to the AMC TV series Breaking Bad.
Film and Felt
Gabe Leibowitz
It's all horrifying, and its eerie resemblance to the McCarthy-esque paranoia and fear that swept the nation makes Bigger Than Life extremely powerful.
Q Network Film Desk
James Kendrick
a surprisingly expressionistic horrorshow, a frightening and indelible portrait of the nuclear family turned into a hellish emotional torture chamber
Orlando Sentinel
Jean Yothers
Mason is extremely good in this difficult role and has fine assistance from Miss Rush in her first meaty part.
Film Comment Magazine
Paul Brunick
The film presents viewers with an ambiguity that's almost Brechtian in its political implications.
New Yorker
Richard Brody
Mason's gift for cold-eyed madness is heightened by Ray's exuberantly lurid approach.
Variety
Variety Staff
James Mason has picked a powerful subject for his first 20th-Fox production and delivers it with quite a bit of dramatic distinction in carrying out the supervisory duties and as the male lead.
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
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.
East Bay Express
Kelly Vance
The epitome of a social problem film, in which the "crisis of conformism" bursts open in every single tension-producing frame.
Seanax.com
Sean Axmaker
The film is a tricky mix of glossy Technicolor realism and elevated expressionism that feels both marvelously classic and aggressively modern.
Reverse Shot
Leo Goldsmith
Always a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns.
EmanuelLevy.Com
Emanuel Levy
A commercial flop at the time, Ray's 1956 film, made right after Rebel Without Cause, is nonethless one of his most poignant and visually compelling critiques of American suburban life, featuring James Mason in top form.
Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Dennis Schwartz
Recognized by many as one of the better films ever made.
Boston Phoenix
Gerald Peary
Ed's vision is demented and distorted, and yet, Ray insinuates, doesn't his protagonist, in an odd way, see through the smug mediocrity that is 1950s America?
Groucho Reviews
Peter Canavese
The sort-of picture-perfection of the suburban home...is a tenuous cover for the unpredictability of life, the short distance between the American Dream and the American nightmare. [Blu-ray]
TV Guide
An extraordinarily rich study of mid-1950s malaise.
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