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Bigger Than Life Overview:

Bigger Than Life (1956) was a Drama - Film Adaptation Film directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by James Mason.

SYNOPSIS

Mason produced this dark psychodrama in which he stars as a small-town teacher who gets hooked on an experimental wonder drug. The film observes the resulting unraveling of his life. The drug causes ego inflation and soon his relationships with his wife and his son become abusive.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

Bigger Than Life BlogHub Articles:

Bigger Than Life (1956): Nicholas Ray and George Mason Fit The Bill

By 4 Star Film Fan on Dec 10, 2019 From 4 Star Films

James Mason gleaned the idea for Bigger Than Life from a contemporary article featured in The New Yorker by a medical writer named Berton Roueché. He detailed the side effects of the drug cortisone featured in real-life horror stories. The title is certainly far from a misnomer and James Mason gi... Read full article

Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)

By Andrew Wickliffe on Oct 5, 2018 From The Stop Button

Despite producing the film himself, top-billed James Mason doesn’t have the best part in Bigger Than Life. Instead, Barbara Rush–as his suffering wife–gets it. Mason’s a man with a life threatening chronic illness who has to take special medication. Slowly–though not too slowly–that medi... Read full article

Bigger Than Life (1956)

By Beatrice on Apr 4, 2016 From Flickers in Time

Bigger Than Life Directed by Nicholas Ray Written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum from an article by Burton Roueche 1956/USA Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation First viewing/Netflix rental #323 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Nicholas Ray makes this more than an expose on the da... Read full article

Bigger than Life, Nicholas Ray, 1956

By Aaron West on Mar 23, 2015 From Criterion Blues

Mar 23 Posted by aaronwest Nicholas Ray had an uncanny ability at capturing the social isolation and detachment of certain groups during the 1950s, that contrasted with the pristine, manufactured image of the obedient nuclear family as seen on TV. He played around in a variety of genres, such as th... Read full article

Bigger than Life, Nicholas Ray, 1956

By Aaron West on Mar 23, 2015 From Criterion Blues

Mar 23 Posted by aaronwest Nicholas Ray had an uncanny ability at capturing the social isolation and detachment of certain groups during the 1950s, that contrasted with the pristine, manufactured image of the obedient nuclear family as seen on TV. He played around in a variety of genres, such as th... Read full article

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Bigger Than Life Quotes:

Ed Avery: God was wrong!
Ed Avery: Childhood is a congenital disease - and the purpose of education is to cure it. We're breeding a race of moral midgets.
Ed Avery: [of wife Lou] It's a shame that I didn't marry someone who was my intellectual equal.
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Bigger Than Life Facts
Average Shot Length (ASL) = 11 seconds
Playwright Clifford Odets was invited on the set by the director Nicholas Ray, where he worked on re-writing the final scene of the film. Ed Avery (Jamese Mason), still delirious out of his coma, starting to talk about Abraham Lincoln was Odet's contribution.
Marilyn Monroe, who was friends with Nicholas Ray and shooting Bus Stop at an adjoining stage at 20th Century Fox, shot a brief cameo as a nurse during a hospital sequence. Her scene was deleted because the studio was afraid that Monroe would use this cameo as the second film she owed under her contract.
Though only Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum are credited for the screenplay, the shooting script was entirely re-worked by director Nicholas Ray and actor/producer James Mason, who added the first 20 minutes of the film depicting Ed Avery's daily life before being hospitalized. Re-writes by Ray, his friend Gavin Lambert (who at that time was living together with Ray, recently confessing that they were actually lovers) and Clifford Odets went on all through the shooting process.
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