Bigger Than Life (1956)

dir. Nicholas Ray
writ. story and screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, from New Yorker article by Burton Roueche
feat. James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau, Christopher Olsen

Leave it to Nicholas Ray to capture so many disturbing elements of American life in a single picture. Schoolteacher Ed Avery (Mason) attempts to hide his second job as a taxi dispatcher from his wife (Rush) and son (Olsen), not wanting to upset them as he provides the idyllic suburban life. Though he insists that they are a boring couple with boring friends, he won't upset the boat He also hides debilitating pains that strike regularly, until his collapse forces the issue.

Diagnosed with a severe circulatory disorder, he goes on the new miracle drug, Cortisone, the perfect solution to his problem, though with potential psychological side effects. Naturally, he hides the side effects and ups his own dosage, while falling under the spell of the drug, dipping into depression before rising wonderfully into manic highs. A sharp script and Mason's pitch-perfect performance make for brilliant transitions between these highs and lows, bringing a surprising realism to his mood changes without the typically overblown histrionics of Hollywood (see Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).

As the manic side takes over completely, Ed at first embraces the family, eager to give his wife and son their every desire, despite the family's meager finances. But as the dosage rises, Ed's demons are set loose. He dismisses childhood as a disease, something to be cured by teachers, then abandons the school, envisioning himself as an educational crusader. He promptly prepares to leave his home, only burdened by his wife who he clearly no longer loves.

It is in moments like these where the film truly distinguishes itself, with Rush managing a tone of the doting wife, even offering to help her beloved husband pack as he readies to abandon her, all with the hope that he will recover. She suffers repeated insults, including being told by her husband at the dinner table in front of their son that he has no love or use for her anymore. But she acts out of faith and love, hopeful that she can recover the man she married, or at least protect their son from his madness.

Ed only sticks around to educate their son, Richie, though he feels no shame in his draconian methods of marathon sessions rife with ridicule for Richie's failures to answer questions correctly. It is only a matter of time before he sees his son as a burden and untrustworthy, turning to the Bible for guidance, certain that he must sacrifice the boy. Anyone who knows the story of director Nicholas Ray finding his wife, Gloria Grahame, in bed with his teenage son from an earlier marriage, can't help but consider the fuel lent to this penultimate savage scene.

While the film gets the luxury of blaming the demon drug for much of the wrongdoing, thus escaping with a hopeful happy ending, the wary approach to the conclusion including the fact that Ed will still have to use Cortisone to stay alive preserves the eerie aspects of the film in plausible way, leaving the future uncertain for the family, forever to be haunted by the father and husband's psychotic period.