Stimulating cinema: Bigger Than Life

Director: Nicholas Ray
Year: 1956

In its own way, this slice of the darker side of 1950s suburban American life is scarier than 50 slasher flicks. And perhaps it resonates more for me because I can relate to the central premise of the film--watching someone you love become a changed person thanks to misuse of prescription drugs. Been there, done that. So while things never quite got to the point that they did for the characters in this movie, I've been awful close. Like Walter Matthau's kindhearted best friend Wally, I've had to literally have to wrestle someone back from the brink. It's hard to fight with tears in your eyes and it's even harder to watch a movie, but that's what "Bigger Than Life" was for me. A snapshot, a memory and ultimately, a nightmare.

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a fine upstanding man. He has an adoring wife named Lou (Barbara Rush) and a happy little boy named Richie (Christopher Olsen). Ed is a schoolteacher, well-respected by colleagues and superiors alike. He has two secrets though, a fairly benign one and a more serious. Two or three times a week, he works as a dispatcher for a cab company in order to make ends meet. Money is tight in the Avery household and that's one of the threads that runs through the film. Ed is also in great and almost constant pain, and apparently has been trying to keep this hidden for the last six months.

Following a dinner party for Ed's friends, the pain becomes too great and Ed passes out--not once but twice. He is taken to the hospital where a battery of tests are run. Lou comes to visit and--after one of his co-workers from the cab company drops in--Ed confesses to his "double life." There's much relieved laughter--Lou of course thought he was having an affair but it turns out that Ed was only trying to make things better for her and Richie. It's a real puzzler as to what's wrong with Ed's health, but eventually the doctors decide on a diagnosis. And the prognosis is grim, Ed could very well soon be dead. However, there is some hope; the (then) new drug cortisone has been known to help. Ed is given a prescription with strict instructions on how and when to take the pills.

Very soon, Ed's behavior begins to change. Despite the family's financial hardship, he insists on taking Lou to the finest store in town to buy some clothes. Throwing the football around with Richie now has an intense, hard edge. And in one memorable scene, Ed manages to offend practically every parent of his students as he delivers a speech about the limitations of children at a PTA meeting. Things grow even worse--a now paranoid Ed, who is taking far more than the daily dosage, accuses Wally and Lou of having and affair and in due time he announces his plan to leave her and devote his time to a nebulous research project that he feels will change the course of education.

It's riveting to watch, and Ed's descent is made more poignant by his family. Lou is the classic enabler, refusing to see the obvious even when Wally implores her to do something. Richie, who eventually becomes the focal point of Ed's psychotic rantings, is a poor confused kid. At one point, when things are at their worst, Richie exclaims that he'd rather have his father stop taking the cortisone and die than continue on his downward spiral. The movie reaches its frightening crescendo when Ed turns into a Bible-quoting madman bent on the destruction of his family.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this movie was not a financial success upon its release. It's not the typical happy nuclear family, "Father Knows Best" fare. But it earned enormous respect among critics--writing in the influential French journal "Cahiers du Cinema," Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed it one of his 10 favorites. But looking back, we see that Ray and Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, were remarkably forward thinking in their portrayal of the insidious things that can happen when prescription drugs are misused. Ray is simply wonderful in his role, spanning the entire range of human emotion in the course of 95 minutes. Matthau is also strong in his role as the best buddy, offering humor, logic and empathy throughout the proceedings.