God was wrong!

tieman64

Nicholas Ray directs "Bigger Than Life". The plot? Ed Avery (James Mason), suffering from a fatal inflammation of the arteries, is prescribed an experimental drug. He becomes addicted to this drug, which leads to severe side effects, chief among which is the development of certain tyrannical tendencies.

Based on a New Yorker article by Berton Roueche, "Bigger Than Life" initially appears to be one of those condescending "social problem" films about the dangers of drug abuse and addiction (see Otto Preminger's "The Man With The Golden Arm", released the previous year). But it eventually becomes clear that Ray is wholly uninterested in pharmaceuticals. Instead, Ed Avery becomes an existential figure typical of Ray's cinema. He's a man who has turned his back on Post War America, deemed the American Dream precarious and wholly rotten, is ashamed that he must work two jobs to keep his family afloat, barely communicates with his wife and child, finds suburbia to be both dull and devoid of any meaningful substance, deems the post war economic boom to be nothing but vacuous consumerism, and feebly keeps travel posters of exotic locales in his home as a means of extricating himself from a stifling, claustrophobic and wholly toxic situation. "We've become dull," he tells his wife, "I've become dull."

Ed's arterial inflammation is therefore not only a literal illness, but a manifestation of what Sartre called "existential nausea", a symptom of both acute consciousness and a toxic environment. In a similar regard, the "miracle drug" which Ed is prescribed becomes a stand-in for any addiction used to dull the senses and escape pain. Recall Ray's "In A Lonely Place" and "On Dangerous Ground", where men face similar anxieties and disappear into either booze or their careers.

Ed's breakdown is far more complex than previous Ray "heroes", however. Crushed by the weight of his own impotency/castration, his perceived insignificance, Ed rebels against his failed Oedipal role. He not only begins to resent his wife and son, whom he blames for restricting his freedom and achievements, but becomes a kind of super-ego agent, wholly vengeful, sadistic and punishing. Frighteningly, Ed then inflates further from a symbol of raging patriarchal authority to a fascist figure, denouncing every institutions he comes into contact with (the school, the family, the church, and the general economic hierarchy of postwar America). Only he knows what's best for everyone.

It is only when Ed's son points out Ed's failings that Ed's self importance begins to diminish. Forced to cast aside his grandiose plans, Ed ceases exalting himself, and instead starts transposing his desires onto his son, whom he begins grooming and prepping for greatness. But this too fails, resulting in Ed's desire to kill himself and purge the world of his "inferior" wife and child.

Before attempting to kill his family, Ed quotes a passage from the Bible in which Abraham offers his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. The implication, of course, is that Ed, like Abraham, is putting himself above ethics, sacrificing himself and his family for some higher authority. What's interested is that, in the Bible, God intervenes and saves Isaac once Abraham has demonstrated his devotion. The opposite is the case in "Bigger Than Life". "God was wrong!" Avery screams, before attempting murder. Who then is Ed's sacrifice for? Ed's unusual in that he denounces all symbolic authority, all social structures, and even himself as a substitute Ordering Force; suicidally, he wants to be free of all association.

Aesthetically, the film mixes domestic horror, melodrama and German Expressionism. Ray's use of macabre shadows and darkness recall the horrors of Fritz Lang, whilst various medical treatments act as a precursor to "The Exorcist", with their eerie red lights and grotesque looking X ray machines. Remove the macro-cosmic, historical themes of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and you likewise have Ray's "Bigger Than Life", both films about school teachers who slowly lose their minds and abuse their families, both exposing what Walter Metz calls the "inherent inadequacies of the patriarchal family structure", both charting the uncanny, where the familiar domestic problems of the "heim" conceal the "unheim", the darker desires of familial annihilation and horrific behaviour.

The film makes use of simple, but effective, symbolism. A stairway, the bridge between private and public, becomes the point of violent conflict (as it was in Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause"), and two everyday objects are used repeatedly throughout the film to create different effects. Think the glass of milk Ed drinks during his bridge game, which echoes the glass of barium drunk during an X-ray exam and then becomes the contentious pitcher of milk of the final dinner scene. A simple football is used for similar effect, initially used as a proud mantelpiece, then a source of shame, then an instrument of torture and finally a peace offering.

Today, films like "American Beauty", "Blue Velvet", "Little Children", "The Ice Storm", "Revolutionary Road" etc etc are praised for "exposing the horror beneath suburban life". Such films were routinely made in the 1940s and 50s (think "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", "Trouble in Tahiti", "Shadow of a Doubt", or another James Mason vehicle, "Lolita"), most of which say more than their modern counterparts.

Upon release, "Bigger Than Life" wasn't received well in the United States, but the French loved it. Once the baby boomers grew up the film began to garner appreciation in the West, until the boomers themselves became Ed Avery, leading to another wave of "domestic horror" films in the 1990s.

8.5/10 - Nicholas Ray, one of the most idiosyncratic voices of early Hollywood, is always worth watching.

score /10

tieman64 20 April 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2416792/