Bigger Than Life (1956)

Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life never achieved the critical or popular success of his Rebel Without a Cause, released the previous year, but it holds up as an equally powerful look at the dark and troubling underside of life in a "normal" American family. While Rebel Without a Cause explored the impact of a weak and ineffectual father on a teenager struggling to assert his maturity and masculinity, Bigger Than Life examined the other side of a similar situation, as Ed Avery (James Mason) slowly mutates into an aggressively domineering father willing to murder a child who can't live up to his high standards. While on the surface Bigger Than Life is a warning about the use of untested and possibly dangerous drugs (Avery's psychosis is brought on by dangerously high dosages of cortisone, still in the experimental stages at the time), what's most memorable about the film is Mason's superbly modulated performance (one of the best of his career), in which he gradually transforms from a typical high school teacher and suburban dad into a megalomaniac who refuses to accept anything less than perfection from his students or his family -- even going so far to suggest he can do better than God in his judgment of his son's worth. Mason and Ray took the typically over-ambitious father who pesters Junior for good grades and a home run in his next little league game, and exaggerated him into something truly terrifying; if Rebel Without a Cause made suggested that juvenile delinquency could happen in a "good" home, Bigger Than Life went even farther in suggesting just how sinister a "good" home could be. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide