Schoolteacher and family man Ed Avery, who's been suffering bouts of severe pain and even blackouts, is hospitalized with what's diagnosed as a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, Ed agrees to an experimental treatment: doses of the hormone cortisone. Ed makes a remarkable recovery, and returns home to his wife, Lou, and their son, Richie. He must keep taking cortisone tablets regularly to prevent a recurrence of his il... (Full plot summary below)
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Schoolteacher and family man Ed Avery, who's been suffering bouts of severe pain and even blackouts, is hospitalized with what's diagnosed as a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, Ed agrees to an experimental treatment: doses of the hormone cortisone. Ed makes a remarkable recovery, and returns home to his wife, Lou, and their son, Richie. He must keep taking cortisone tablets regularly to prevent a recurrence of his illness. But the "miracle" cure turns into its own nightmare as Ed starts to abuse the tablets, causing him to experience increasingly wild mood swings.
Leave your thoughts about Bigger Than Life.
| Seanax.comSean AxmakerThe film is a tricky mix of glossy Technicolor realism and elevated expressionism that feels both marvelously classic and aggressively modern. |
| Q Network Film DeskJames Kendricka surprisingly expressionistic horrorshow, a frightening and indelible portrait of the nuclear family turned into a hellish emotional torture chamber |
| Combustible CelluloidJeffrey M. AndersonThe house perfectly reflects and strains against Mason's masterful performance as the good-natured man turned bad. |
| BBC.comTom DawsonA superbly shot critique of the suffocating conformity, repression and materialism at the heart of middle-class life. |
| Observer (UK)Philip FrenchIt was as much undervalued and misunderstood as the films Douglas Sirk was making at the time. |
| Reverse ShotLeo GoldsmithAlways a shrewd melodramatist, with a particular eye for the domestic space, Ray builds this sense of conflict into the Avery home itself, with its frequently competing horizontal and vertical patterns. |
| Boston PhoenixGerald PearyEd's vision is demented and distorted, and yet, Ray insinuates, doesn't his protagonist, in an odd way, see through the smug mediocrity that is 1950s America? |
| Arkansas Democrat-GazettePhilip Martin...is a dark cautionary tale about suburban ennui that feels like an unacknowledged antecedent to the AMC TV series Breaking Bad. |
| Goatdog's MoviesMichael W. Phillips, Jr.A tragicomic epic that invites you to laugh uneasily. |
| Empire MagazinePatrick PetersJean-Luc Godard ranked this among the finest US films ever made. Recommendation enough. |
