507 Bigger Than Life

[hearthesilence]

BTW, here's what Glenn Kenny had to say about that Voice article....absolutely hilarious!

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Dunham... continu[es:] "I was watching it with a boy who I wanted very much to think I was cool..."

"cool" ? Like Harry Knowles or like Ryan McGinley or like Jack Kerouac?

And there you have the crux of her insipid shallowness, and that of a whole generation of artists, whose work will, hopefully, be forgotten.

The notion that there's anything approaching "realism" in any artform - and that it is the preferable mode - is pretty daft.

[jojo]

I think this is more a case that stylization in acting changes over time and presentist audiences like to think that they've arrived at a point of unrivalled sophistication and verisimilitude. Thus they swallow the nonsense of the present whole while looking down on the nonsense of the past. In fifty years' time, the grandchildren of today's heedless presentists will be howling at today's 'realistic' acting styles and sneering just as foolishly at the gullibility of their forebears.

It's possible, but as someone mentioned in this thread, it does seem that Bigger Than Life elicits this sort of sneering reaction more than most films around this time. I do think it is deliberately played a little "bigger", if you will, than even the stylized norm of the typical studio film of this era.

[domino harvey]

But the modern superiority that many viewers bring to Hollywood films like this never accounts for intentions or context when it's easier to giggle and sneer

[matrixschmatrix]

It's funny, I know people who will sit respectfully through any foreign movie- working as hard as they can not to let their contextual differences get in the way of understanding what the movie is trying to do- and giggle dismissively at say, Mason's performance in a movie like this or Jimmy Stewart's makeup/coloration in Vertigo. Uncanny valley, I suppose.

[colinr0380]

Watched the extras on this last night. The 70s interview with Ray was OK, worthwhile and probably Criterion were the only people who would have put this material out, even if the interviewer spends most of the 28 minutes fawning over Rebel Without A Cause like a teenager stuck in an extended adolescent infatuation! Geoff Andrew's commentary was nice, although at times I think he was too harsh on Mason's character Ed and too forgiving of Barbara Rush's wife Lou.

I feel that one of the most interesting things about the film, and this might just be a consequence of trying to be compassionate for all the characters, is that while Ed is the most extreme character, he and Lou seem well matched in temperment. While the drugs heighten Ed into megalomaniac extremes, Lou herself is often quick to anger, suspicious, quick to go outside the family for help or rebel when she thinks she can get away with something. I could imagine a similar story playing out were Lou on the drugs while Ed remained within a normal register, although it might play out in a different sphere without the same 'motivating' factors as Ed has from his double jobs. Lou might use frustrated work ambitions and the world of the home as weapons in this alternate reality film.

Perhaps one way in which the ending could be seen as still dark for Ed and happier for Lou and Richie is that while Ed stays precariously on the drugs, at least the rest of the family have begun to detach themselves from him in a way, so that if a divorce or Ed's death lie in their future, they will perhaps not be as devastated and unprepared for it as they would have been at the beginning of the film. To add to Andrew's discussion about coming to terms with mortality in his commentary, it is not just Ed who struggles with this but the rest of the family who both cannot discuss the death of the paternal/bread winner figure openly, yet appear to be jolted into at least making self protective contingency plans by the end of the film.

As Richie says in his major moment of rebellion after trying to throw the pills away "I wish you were dead than the way you are now!" - in a dark way Ed would be more useful to mother and son as a happy memory than a malfunctioning presence. This sort of plays into the 'keeping up appearances' aspect as well - is it better to become a single parent family through no fault of your own (death through a medical condition while working two jobs to keep your lifestyle going) than to have Ed around and destroying their lives, or to have to take steps to divorce him?

Jonathan Leathem's and Susan Ray's interviews were fantastic. It was interesting to listen to Leathem's discussion of Pat and Wally and I wonder if their presence plays into the 'duality' of the main couple that Susan Ray talks of. While Leathem talks of Pat and Wally as 'disruptive single characters' in the narrative, chaotic and problematic until they get safely paired off I wonder if they are both characters for our main couple to have a potential affair with? And this subtext itself makes me much less sympathetic to Lou than I would have been.

As much as Pat is built up (in Lou's mind at least) to be a potential threat in the early section of the film, once Ed starts on the drugs and becomes too good for anybody, any thought of Pat being the thing that will lure Ed away from his family is overwhelmed by the addiction. Pat herself drops entirely out of the film at this point.

However Wally's presence only becomes more and more prominent: tousling the head of the son on the stairs while they wait for news of Ed's condition; coming in through the back door with the son again to make a 'building up' drink supposedly for Ed which he then almost force feeds Lou; the idea that he is now the one that Lou turns to for advice and a shoulder to cry on rather than trying to work things out with Ed. He is also the person who has the most extreme reactions of dismay to Ed's schoolroom lectures and is the person who arrives with the news that it is 'cortisone's fault'.

So he truly becomes a presence in the family home that Pat ironically never even began to become. Leathem does not bring the above idea up, instead bringing up the other interesting suggestion that Wally may be gay and that is why he is so 'worryingly single'. I think the film allows for both of these interpretations (and maybe even plays one into the other with Lou's masculine name) to create the feeling of as yet undefined ambiguity around the single characters. Once they 'make their choice' they can then be accommodated into society (but as Ed so troublingly proves the individualistic behaviours are there below the surface ready to explode when given free reign again).

That, I think, is something which equates Ed and Lou together in my mind, even if they themselves do not understand (or want to acklowledge) how alike in temperment that they are. Leathem's discussion of the incongruity of Mason (his accent, his demeanour) for an all-American family part perhaps also plays into this, suggesting that Lou got together with him by how strange a blend of 'homely' American and 'foreign' European he is.

[matrixschmatrix]

"Lou herself is often quick to anger, suspicious, quick to go outside the family for help or rebel when she thinks she can get away with something."

Really? I also thought Lou was a deeply flawed character, but because she was an enabler, not a fighter; "going outside the family for help" would have been a very appropriate thing to do, and something she should have done much faster! Instead, she sits by while Ed abuses her son, and tries to keep the family together at the expense of essentially condoning what he is doing.

She is somewhat suspicious, but not unreasonably so- Ed is lying to her. If she were readier to rebel, quicker to anger, more willing to recognize that she ought to protect herself and Richie and not suffer in the name of keeping the family together, she would be a much less flawed character, and the movie would not have played out so darkly.

[colinr0380]

I see her as someone who is quick to blame her (albeit becoming looney tunes) husband rather than understand what he is going through. Sure, there is lip service to understanding his condition but then there is the "You're not in the hospital now!" scene that may show her frustration but also their lack of empathy for each other. It feels as if Lou is playing into that sense that if you are in hospital you are totally ill and if you are out of it you are perfectly well again as much as Ed is in his sense of feeling great having come back home. Just as previously there was her suspicion about Ed possibly having an affair while seemingly no acknowledgement of the way that Wally might be helping to fuel Ed's own paranoia.

Ed's behaviour is taken to a greater extreme with the drug abuse but I think both husband and wife start out at the same level (and maybe Lou's mental unbalance could be seen to be greater since at least she is not working two jobs to push her to the crisis point!)

It never seems to be her fault - it is Ed's/Pat's/the doctors in the hospital/the family doctor being away for the weekend/the drugs. There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of her role in the relationship, or what she actually does, except when she is trying to play along with Ed's fantasies to buy time to stab him in the back. She might be an enabler, but she is an enabler on her own terms. Perhaps it is for the best that she ends up stuffed in the closet!

[Oedipax]

And Mason's last line, talking about dreaming that he was walking with Lincoln...isn't that almost proof that this film has indeed been an ironic take of stereotypical 50s-era American suburbia?

Delayed response here, but I wanted to point out that this is probably a way of easing Mason's character into slowly recalling his actions. He nearly kills his son after reading Biblical verses about Abraham and Isaac, so when he comes to he's been dreaming about another Abraham. Not long after, he recovers the rest of his memory.

[Roger Ryan]

And Mason's last line, talking about dreaming that he was walking with Lincoln...isn't that almost proof that this film has indeed been an ironic take of stereotypical 50s-era American suburbia?

Delayed response here, but I wanted to point out that this is probably a way of easing Mason's character into slowly recalling his actions. He nearly kills his son after reading Biblical verses about Abraham and Isaac, so when he comes to he's been dreaming about another Abraham. Not long after, he recovers the rest of his memory.

Yes, it's implied in the commentary that Ray asked Clifford Odets to come in and rewrite the final scenes to make Ed's transition back to "normality" less clunky. It works pretty well in that the whole Abraham Lincoln dream/vision comes out of nowhere, which makes the viewer continue to question Ed's sanity. The idea that he sees himself walking with the great emancipator also continues to enforce Ed's megalomania. It's only when Ed ties in the name "Abraham" to the Biblical scripture that he recalls his violent loss of control. Of course, the choice of using Lincoln must be seen as evoking the idea of America and emancipation; Ed may be dreaming of freeing the minds of his students and of humankind, but he is incapable of freeing himself and his family from an increasingly debilitating middle-class existence.

[Haggai]

I just rewatched this great movie recently on blu-ray for the first time and also went through the extras. While listening to the commentary, for some reason I got to thinking about the math problem Ed tortures Richie with in the scene where Lou eventually slips Richie the glass of milk. Having an extensive math background myself, I decided to see if the answer Richie gives is actually correct...so yes, this endless post will have math in it.

First off, I think I hadn't considered the issue before because I didn't really understand the problem as Ed states it. He says (slight inaccuracies possible, this is from memory): "A and B can cut a cord for 50 cents an hour. A can do the job in 5 hours, B can do it in 6 hours. How long does it take them if they work together?"

I was confused because, well, what kind of "cord" takes 5 or 6 hours to cut, and why would people be working together on cutting an extension cord or whatever I was assuming? Of course, Ed would have scolded me for not realizing that the "cord" isn't the point (as he scolds Richie for first thinking about the 50 cents an hour rate they're getting, which doesn't matter either)--the point is to figure out how long this job, whatever it is, will take two people working together if you know how long each of them would take if they worked alone. I did just Google what Ed must have been referring to: a "cord" is a term that measures a volume of wood, so the problem is about two people who are each being paid to cut a big pile of wood--which, of course, would take several hours for just one or two people to complete.

OK, so we just have a problem of A doing a job in 5 hours and B doing the same job in 6 hours, where we want to figure out how long it will take if they work together and split the labor between them. This is a fairly common SAT-type of question, at least in the US, i.e. a basic college entrance exam level thing. Which, of course, is too advanced for someone as young as Richie, who looks to be around the age of 4th grade (Christopher Olsen, born in 1946, was probably 9 years old during filming)...but Ed's obsessive cruelty is obviously the point of the scene.

Anyway, back to the math. How do we combine the two relevent numbers--5 hours for A to do the job, 6 hours for B to do the job--to get the answer? And is the strangely precise-sounding answer Richie somehow comes up with (that must have been some glass of milk)--"2 hours, 43 minutes, 38 and 2/11 seconds"--actually the right one?

A simpler version of this same problem, in that the answer is more intuitively obvious, would be if A and B each take exactly 1 hour to do the job if they work alone. In that case, if they work together, it's pretty clear that they could do it together in 30 minutes--each of them can get exactly half the job done in that amount of time, so working together, that's how long they need to finish the entire job. The key is to think about what fraction of the job each of them can finish in a certain fixed amount of time.

So in the problem at hand, the first step is to note that A can do 1/5 of the job per hour (5 hours to do the whole job), and B can do 1/6 of the job per hour. Working together, then, they can do 1/5 + 1/6 = (6+5)/(6*5) = 11/30 of the job per hour. The number of hours to finish the job, then, is just the reciprocal of this hourly rate: 30/11 hours.

This comes out to 2 and 8/11 hours, which is 2 hours, 43 and 7/11 minutes...and one more step gives us 2 hours, 43 minutes, 38 and 2/11 seconds. So yes, Richie got the right answer!

[swo17]

Post of the year

[zedz]

Get a room, you two. One with a blackboard.

[Fortisquince]

That post was far more interesting and entertaining than the dry-as-a-bone commentary for the film.

[Jun-Dai]

I'm pretty sure I'm never using Cortizone cream again. That stuff is dangerous.

[brendanjc]

I loved the television blaring circus music, but that seemed like a familiar gimmick. Has Hitchcock ever done that? Seems like something that would fly in his world.

The carousel sequence from Strangers on a Train jumped into my mind immediately when I watched this last night. There was another similar audio touch in this film, as well, when Mason collapses on his way out of his house and his fingers, gripping the doorway, keep the buzzer pressed down while he struggles.

[knives]

Finally got around to this bastard and while it's no In a Lonely Place it still managed to be entertaining and great on too many different levels. This is one of those few American films that utilizes perfectly its colour and widescreen. It simply couldn't be the same film any other way. It's also pretty interesting just how few close ups there are. Given that what few are in the film true closeups in the film are awkwardly framed maybe he just wasn't sure how to do a close up in widescreen to convey what he wanted. Though that distance did make me think Matthau was Fred McMurray for a few minutes.
I was blown away the strongest by the story. Mason's pathetic representation of pride mixed with Ray's more than empathetic direction had me sympathizing with Ed for far monger than I probably should have. During the scene with the PTA woman I couldn't help but think he might have a point. Hell, even the milk man sequence has this odd humour that endears Mason like a W.C. Fields character. He really did make me laugh hard. Of course that all goes to hell by the time the math scene occurs. Mason's so cartoonish in that scene that it might be more shocking that he kept any suspense. This reason for the success here i suppose is the opposite of Night of the Hunter's. The situation and direction may be cartoonish and absurd(those shadows should have gotten their own credit), but Mason lays low and tries to be as normal as the situation will allow. That performance glues everything together.
That reminds me too of the best shot of the film, the one that composes the cover. There's a large number of layers to the acting and the composition there. I especially love how the kid acts as the two parents create this sort of 'V' around him with their shadows doing the same to them. There's so much to flinch over. An absolute winner that I think I'm going to love.

[domino harvey]

This is one of those few American films that utilizes perfectly its colour and widescreen.

Knives, the fifties in Hollywood were about sometimes only doing that

[knives]

I can't think of many instances especially compared with all of the instances where they were(are) utilized poorly in American cinema. The Japanese always seemed to have a better understanding of both to me(though the Italians are genius with colour).

[Murdoch]

Sirk, Tashlin, Ray, Mankiewicz, Minnelli, Donen, Boetticher, A Kiss Before Dying, Forbidden Planet, A Star is Born and the countless musicals and westerns that fit the bill. There's a nearly endless supply of visual splendor that came from the decade, I woudn't sell it so short.

[knives]

That's a lot to cover, but as far as widescreen goes I'll give you the musicals and that's it(but in even some of the best of those outside of the musical sections the widescreen isn't fully utilized. for colour I'll give more(though one of your examples I haven't seen) and say that most of those use colour, but not in a way you couldn't find on stage. The way it's done in Bigger Than Life has purely cinematic elements. Tashlin and Sirk are really the only ones of what you listed that breath that(though A Star is Born does utilize it's colour in a very necessary way even if I don't think it is used particularly in a cinematic way).

[warren oates]

So I caught most of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) on cable over the weekend, recognized the kid in it from Bigger Than Life and remembered that every time I see the Ray film I wonder if Hitchcock had seen it too before he made Vertigo. There's something about the obsessive manic energy of Mason's dress-shopping scene that really reminds me of the scene in Vertigo where Scottie tries to remake Judy into Madeline in the department store. So, to the Hitchcock scholars out there: Is there any evidence that Hitch or the French novelists had seen or possibly even been influenced by Bigger Than Life?

[guidedbyvoices]

I got the criterion Blu Ray from Netflix. I thought it looked great, colors were great, loved the big shadows and framing of the math problem scene. But as a story, man I couldn't get into it. Nowhere near as good as In a Lonely Place or even Rebel. Just too over the top, and then the swing at the end from evil to 'how's everybody doin' was ridiculous. I think for something 50s melodrama and color saturation, I much preferred All That Heaven Allows

[calculus entrophy]

The way I interpreted the issues you outlined above, is that the basis for his perceptions has been altered by the drugs.

Exaggerated.

So the story has some connection to that theme, in also being "distorted".....Bigger Than Life.

I found it to be almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the bizarre and mundane.

Or i may have just been buzzed......

[swo17]

And Rebel Without a Cause isn't over the top?