Bigger Than Life | Member Movie Night

(Nicholas Ray, US 1956, 95 min., 35mm)

In one of the best films of the 1950s, the subtle but powerful James Mason plays a middle-class schoolteacher who undergoes cortisone treatment after contracting a mysterious disease. The drug gives him a miraculous recovery, but also causes delusions of grandeur and eats away at his sanity, eventually threatening his family’s safety. Director Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) depicts the pressures of American suburban life and undermines virtually every ideal at the core of the Eisenhower era with a vision unlike any other on film. The Cinemascope frame lends epic intensity to the domestic storyline while highlighting Ray’s famed attention to detail in costume and set direction.