Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life - his most focused, if not strongest directorial effort - is a lot of things. A Jekyll and Hyde story. A scathing dissection of Eisenhower-era values and what it means to be a "middle-class" American. A warning against the dangers of prescription drugs or, for that matter, any type of addiction.
The film is part melodrama, part noir-ish horror. It predicts The Shining, American Beauty, Blue Velvet and even Breaking Bad. To its contemporary works, the film is a more subtle, internalized counter-balance to similar-minded fare like All That Heaven Allows.
Championed by the Cahiers du Cinema crowd (most notably Truffaut), Bigger Than Life was, perhaps, too forward thinking and honest to resonate at its time. Just as the infamous Bosley Crowler dismissed All That Heaven Allows, the stuffy New York Times critic dubbed Bigger Than Life "more pitiful than terrifying".
Well, it's difficult to view oneself through a fractured mirror, especially when you aren't looking all that hard to begin with. And maybe that's just the beginning of why Bigger Than Life feels so much fresher and on point than it did half-a-century earlier.
Ed Avery, 10 Feet Tall and Tearing Apart at the Seams
The fated protagonist in Bigger Than Life is Ed Avery (James Mason), a man with a name as plain as the milk we see him drinking so often - normal, non-threatening, complacent. Before his crippling pain and medical problems put him on a mind and mood-altering bend thanks to treatment by a new miracle drug, Cortisone, Avery appears to be living the American dream. He has a beautiful wife (Barbara Rush) and son (Christopher Olsen), the spread in the suburbs and boring dinner parties with friends.
But even before the Cortisone brings on Avery's psychosis and grandiosity, Ray pulls back to reveal the cracks in the structure. Secretly, Avery works as a taxi dispatcher, to supplement his teacher's income. Though his home, walls lined with travel posters hinting at this yearning for something greater far, is quintessentially middle class American, there are some telling flaws. By night, we get no perspective of the house, but by day, Ray exposes a street crammed with boxy suburban abodes.
There is darkness lurking in every corner, as the shadows cut into the bright technicolor hues. Jekyll, it seems, had intones of Hyde all along. Mason's ambiguous accent and European appearance is all part of the circus act, exposing the roots of a denied history, written over and retold in which America stands apart from the world, on a pedestal.
All the while, Ray asks implicitly, well, what is an American anyway? And why is it so great to be one?
From Drama to Domestic Horror
The life-saving Cortisone sends Avery into a flux of manic-depression, arousing all Avery's inadequacies, driving him to a form of domestic fascism. When he preaches at PTA night, demanding a progressive overhaul of primary education theory, much to the disgust of his friend and fellow teacher, Wally (Walter Matthau), Avery almost mirrors Hitler, who Avery presumably would have fought against in the four years he did in the Navy.
The mindset calls to mind Jonathan Richman's lyrics, two decades later, to "Old World": "I wanna keep my place in the old world/ Keep my place in the arcane."
As Ray's follow up to A Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life again deals with the damaged American psyche, one reaching out for anything different from the current farce that everyday life has become. To Avery, everything around him, even he and his wife, have become "boring". He imagines himself as grand, greater than God at one point, but in truth, Avery is too plain to be forward thinking. Instead, he reaches back, to the "old world".
In one of the Criterion disc's special features, author Jonathan Lethem notes how Ray omits anything pertaining to rock 'n' roll or beat culture that were rising during the 1950s. And its not as of Ray were oblivious of these things (and not mentioning them helps the film from dating itself too heavily).
Bigger Than Life is not a story of rebellion against conformity, but about the compromise that occurs when a lifelong conformist (Avery) decides he must distinguish himself. His misguided mindset sends him tumbling into the Old Testament, abstracting the story of Isaac and Abraham, correcting it because, "God was wrong."
Avery fears his son (something Lethem touches on), but also fears for him. In his Cortisone-crazed state, Avery subjects Richie to grueling tests of mind and body, as if to better the child so he may distinguish himself later in life, before it's too late. This tyranny evolves out of Avery's self-hatred, as does his verbal berating of his wife.
The destruction of the house - physical and metaphorical - is so affecting, that the "happy" ending feels appropriate rather than a studio compromise. Reconciliation, in this world, feels impossible. There is no going back now that the flimsy nature of the Averys' life has been revealed.
Special Features
For a one-disc set, there's plenty to pour over. Best of all is Lethem's 30-minute analysis of the film. It's one of the most perceptive and original readings of the film in existence. Susan Ray, the director's widow, offers her unique insight into the production as well, in a separate feature. The master himself, is fascinating to watch and listen to (although he doesn't touch on Bigger Than Life) in Profile of Nicholas Ray, despite the terribly obnoxious line of questioning from critic Cliff Jahr.
The Verdict
As with many of Ray's films, a less distinguishing eye tends to dismiss his more subtle flourishes. That's why he was one of the best, and when he's in top form, his films are worth watching over and over. Criterion has done another forgotten gem justice.
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