Hollywood's Production Code forbade the depiction of drug addiction, although this rule was challenged by Otto Preminger in 1955 when he made "The Man with the Golden Arm" in which the main character is a heroin addict. The rule only applied to illegal drugs, so Nicholas Ray's "Bigger Than Life", about a man who becomes addicted to prescription drugs, can be seen as a way of getting around the Code while observing its letter. This is a rare example ("Saturday Night Fever" is another) of a film which tells a fictional story but which is based on a non-fiction journalistic article, in this case one published in The New Yorker in 1955.
The main character, Ed Avery, is a New York schoolteacher who is diagnosed with a rare illness which is likely to prove fatal. He is prescribed cortisone, at the time a new and experimental drug, which produces a remarkable improvement in his condition. Unfortunately, he becomes addicted to the cortisone itself and begins abusing it. The drug affects his moods, he begins to experience episodes of megalomania and depression and his personality deteriorates until he becomes a danger to his family and himself.
When first released in 1956 the film was a flop, both critically and commercially. Its star, James Mason, blamed its failure on its use of the widescreen CinemaScope format, then mainly used for Westerns and other epic adventures rather than for domestic dramas like this one. It was, however, taken up by the French "nouvelle vague" film-makers of the sixties- Jean-Luc Godard even included it on his list of the ten best American sound films ever made. More recently critics have taken to hailing it as a damning indictment of 1950s middle-class suburban complacency and conformism.
My view would be that the critics of the fifties were partly right. They were wrong insofar as they overlooked or dismissed the central performance from Mason. His American accent is not too convincing, but in every other respect he is excellent. He succeeds in capturing Avery's tragic dilemma- the drug which is keeping him alive is also destroying him mentally, so both stopping taking it or continuing to take it seem like impossible options.
I am, however, less convinced by claims of the film's wider social significance. Nobody in the it 1950s saw it as a damning indictment of middle-class suburban complacency and conformism; if we see it in that way now that may say more about us than it does about the fifties. A film with a social or political message needs to convey that message to contemporary audiences, not just to posterity. Nobody, for example, in 1940 doubted that "The Great Dictator", another film on Godard's list, was a satire on Hitler, and the parallels with McCarthyism in "Johnny Guitar", another film by Ray from this period, were just as clear then as they are now. (Indeed, they were even clearer then when McCarthy was a public figure constantly in the news headlines, not just a name in a history book).
I think that our need to read social commentary into films like this arises out of the modern perception that the fifties were a particularly conformist, reactionary decade, which was not, of course, how they appeared to people at the time. The film, in fact, presents Avery's behaviour as shocking even by fifties standards. When he delivers a speech to the PTA he uses the occasion to put forward a backward-looking philosophy of education along the lines of "childhood is a disease, education is the cure". This speech has been described as "fascist", but Avery's audience are shown to be shocked by his opinions, and even he admits that they go against the grain of fashionable ideas. If Ray had wanted to depict American society in the fifties as "fascist", he would have shown the audience agreeing with Avery, not reacting against him. Moreover, we have to remember that Avery is a man in the grip of an addiction, and it is never clear how far his behaviour is the result of the drug loosening his inhibitions, allowing his real self to emerge, and how far it is the result of drug-induced changes to that "real self". We should beware of treating his behaviour as being in any way typical of the society in which he lives.
As a personal drama, this is a reasonably good one with a commanding performance. Pace M. Godard, however, I just cannot see it as one of the ten greatest American sound films. I doubt if I would even classify it as one of the ten greatest films of 1956, or one of the ten greatest films starring James Mason. It is certainly not Ray's best; that must be "Rebel without a Cause" from the previous year which gives us a much more powerful vision of American society in the mid-fifties. 6/10
The main character, Ed Avery, is a New York schoolteacher who is diagnosed with a rare illness which is likely to prove fatal. He is prescribed cortisone, at the time a new and experimental drug, which produces a remarkable improvement in his condition. Unfortunately, he becomes addicted to the cortisone itself and begins abusing it. The drug affects his moods, he begins to experience episodes of megalomania and depression and his personality deteriorates until he becomes a danger to his family and himself.
When first released in 1956 the film was a flop, both critically and commercially. Its star, James Mason, blamed its failure on its use of the widescreen CinemaScope format, then mainly used for Westerns and other epic adventures rather than for domestic dramas like this one. It was, however, taken up by the French "nouvelle vague" film-makers of the sixties- Jean-Luc Godard even included it on his list of the ten best American sound films ever made. More recently critics have taken to hailing it as a damning indictment of 1950s middle-class suburban complacency and conformism.
My view would be that the critics of the fifties were partly right. They were wrong insofar as they overlooked or dismissed the central performance from Mason. His American accent is not too convincing, but in every other respect he is excellent. He succeeds in capturing Avery's tragic dilemma- the drug which is keeping him alive is also destroying him mentally, so both stopping taking it or continuing to take it seem like impossible options.
I am, however, less convinced by claims of the film's wider social significance. Nobody in the it 1950s saw it as a damning indictment of middle-class suburban complacency and conformism; if we see it in that way now that may say more about us than it does about the fifties. A film with a social or political message needs to convey that message to contemporary audiences, not just to posterity. Nobody, for example, in 1940 doubted that "The Great Dictator", another film on Godard's list, was a satire on Hitler, and the parallels with McCarthyism in "Johnny Guitar", another film by Ray from this period, were just as clear then as they are now. (Indeed, they were even clearer then when McCarthy was a public figure constantly in the news headlines, not just a name in a history book).
I think that our need to read social commentary into films like this arises out of the modern perception that the fifties were a particularly conformist, reactionary decade, which was not, of course, how they appeared to people at the time. The film, in fact, presents Avery's behaviour as shocking even by fifties standards. When he delivers a speech to the PTA he uses the occasion to put forward a backward-looking philosophy of education along the lines of "childhood is a disease, education is the cure". This speech has been described as "fascist", but Avery's audience are shown to be shocked by his opinions, and even he admits that they go against the grain of fashionable ideas. If Ray had wanted to depict American society in the fifties as "fascist", he would have shown the audience agreeing with Avery, not reacting against him. Moreover, we have to remember that Avery is a man in the grip of an addiction, and it is never clear how far his behaviour is the result of the drug loosening his inhibitions, allowing his real self to emerge, and how far it is the result of drug-induced changes to that "real self". We should beware of treating his behaviour as being in any way typical of the society in which he lives.
As a personal drama, this is a reasonably good one with a commanding performance. Pace M. Godard, however, I just cannot see it as one of the ten greatest American sound films. I doubt if I would even classify it as one of the ten greatest films of 1956, or one of the ten greatest films starring James Mason. It is certainly not Ray's best; that must be "Rebel without a Cause" from the previous year which gives us a much more powerful vision of American society in the mid-fifties. 6/10