BIGGER THAN LIFE (Criterion/E1, 1956) D: Nicholas Ray, w/ James Mason, Barbara Rush. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NNNN Rating: NNNN
A new treatment for a rare disorder wreaks havoc on Ed Avery’s personality. A dedicated family man and teacher, Avery (James Mason) develops mood swings and delusions of grandeur that focus with increasing ferocity on the education and moral correction of his young son. Tragedy looms.
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Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life isn’t as well-known as his acknowledged classic, Rebel Without A Cause, but it mines much the same territory – personal anguish and anxiety emerging from unresolvable tensions and the dark underbelly of picture-perfect 50s suburbia – and uses the same techniques of inserting brief, intense, expressionist eruptions into standard Hollywood storytelling, and subtly disquieting background elements.
Criterion’s typically excellent extras package explores the movie in the context of Ray’s concerns, techniques and career and provides a look at the man himself in the 1977 half-hour TV profile.
EXTRAS Commentary, Ray TV interview, Ray’s widow interview, film appreciation by novelist Jonathan Lethem, essay booklet. Widescreen. English audio and subtitles.