History Film / BiggerThanLife

!! Tropes

* DaylightHorror: The film takes place in bright interiors and daylight, but it gets progressively more and more disturbing as Avery gets crazier and crazier. [[spoiler:The finale when Avery tries to kill his son takes place in broad daylight and it's horrifying]].

* SpiritualSuccessor:
** ''Film/AmericanBeauty,'' which also dealt with a middle-aged father of a family developing a midlife crisis, experimenting with drugs and alienation and angst about his role as family man.
** ''Series/BreakingBad,'' a drama about a teacher frustrated with his low-paying job and failed ambitions who becomes unstable after a fatal medical condition makes him drastically change his life.
** Creator/MartinScorsese sees this as one to Ray's previous film ''Film/RebelWithoutACause,'' another film about StepfordSuburbia which dealt with teenagers and more or less presented a caricatured portrayal of parents. ''Bigger Than Life'' portrays the same kind of environment from the view of the parents.
** Creator/NicholasRay was greatly inspired by Creator/ArthurMiller's ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman'' and saw this film as a SpiritualAdaptation of the same idea of a "working-class tragedy" and the failure deriving from the hero living and stretching himself beyond his means.

* ICouldaBeenAContender: Ed Avery is regarded as a brilliant schoolteacher and in college he apparently played a crucial part in winning a football trophy. He's generally frustrated with his life as a low-paid, overworked family man with a dull social life; the cortisone abuse magnifies those frustrations by making him overcompensate for missing out, resulting in spending sprees, attempts at educational reform in the high school and in his view, taking an active view in his son's rearing. The house itself is filled with travel posters to European countries which Ed wants to visit but can't.

* OnlySaneMan: Walter Matthau's character Wally Gibbs is this. He's affable, acts like a honorary uncle for Richie, cares for Ed and is genial about the boring and dull aspects of high school PTA meetings.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 {{Melodrama}} film directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Rush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role. Mason also served as producer.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bigger_than_life.jpg]]

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 {{Melodrama}} film directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role. Mason also served as producer.

* UnbuiltTrope: ''Bigger Than Life'' is one of many films made in TheFifties that cast a darker light on some of the obsessions of that decade: the suburban "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality (here shown as an attempt by a family straining themselves and living beyond their means), ConspicuousConsumption, and the NuclearFamily (which amounts to a father becoming a tyrant of the home). Moreover it deals with prescription drug abuse far before it became a major public issue in American society.

-> "I feel ten feet tall."

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a teacher in a small American suburban town with a wife Lou (Barbara Rush) and son (Christopher Olsen). On the outside the family is a suburban middle class family, but on the inside they are struggling to make ends meet with Avery holding two jobs to provide for them, being both teacher and a taxi-cab operator. His working life takes a toll on him and he has a breakdown with the doctor noting that his condition would be fatal unless he takes a new drug cortisone but is cautioned to take it only in the prescribed doses. Ed, formerly quite sober and even a little morose, finds that the drug provides him a genuine "high" and he becomes progressively more confident and active in his family and workplace. This high is so pleasing to him that it starts affecting his personality, and his friends, wife and son grow increasingly disconcerted at his new more unpredictable and random personality.

-> "I feel Ten Feet Tall."

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a teacher in a small American suburban town with a wife Lou (Barbara Rush) and son (Christopher Olsen). On the outside the family is a suburban middle class family, but on the inside they are struggling to make ends meet with Avery holding two jobs to provide for them, being both teacher and a taxi-cab operator. His working life takes a toll on him and he has a breakdown with the doctor noting that his condition would be fatal unless he takes a new drug cortisone but is cautioned to take it only in the prescribed doses. Ed, formerly quite sober and even a little morose, finds that the drug which he not only needs to live, provides him a genuine "high" and he becomes progressively more confident and active in his family and workplace, and the high is so pleasing to him that it starts affecting his personality, and his friends, his wife and son grow increasingly disconcerted as his new more unpredictable and random personality.

! Tropes
* AbusiveParents: Cortisone!Ed is progressively nasty and abusive to his own son, emotionally and psychologically, withholding food to force him to improve math and [[spoiler:in the finale tries to murder him]]. Richie gets fed up with this behaviour:

* AsTheGoodBookSays: [[spoiler:The finale pivots on the story of Abraham and Isaac, which is read out in full, except of course for the part where God stops Abraham from killing Isaac]].
* BlasphemousBoast: [[spoiler:In the finale after they go to Church and listen to the preacher discussing Abraham and Isaac, Avery starts ranting about the real meaning of that parable and identifies with Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. His wife Lou, frightened at the implication that Avery wants to kill his son, tries to remind him that God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac. To which, Avery shuts the Bible with force and yells]]:

* ConspicuousConsumption: The famous shopping spree sequence where Ed splurges on expensive clothes and bicycles for his wife and son. It ends up wiping out their credit, and later Lou has to sell some other dresses to make up for her husband's impulse-purchases and more or less signifies the frustration of how the family barely struggle to live beyond their means as it is.
* DaylightHorror: The film takes place in bright interiors and daylight, but it gets progressively more and more disturbing as Avery gets crazier and crazier. [[spoiler:In the finale when Avery tries to kill his son, it takes place in broad daylight and its horrifying]].
* DeniedFoodAsPunishment: Cortison!Ed insists that Richie play well at football or he won't get lunch. When Richie fails, Ed forbids him lunch or even supper, and then forcing him to do math problems in a half-starved state. His wife manages to smuggle Richie some milk, and Ed goes ballistic when he finds out that she went behind his back like that.
* ExtremeDoormat: Lou, Ed's wife, is a 50s housewife who more or less devotes everything to her family and [[spoiler:when cortisone starts making Ed dangerous and insane, she refuses to commit Ed to a clinic out of fear of social stigma as well as doctor's expenses. She decides to subjugate herself to Ed's verbal and emotional abuse for the sake of her son, Richie. This nearly turns to disaster since it almost gets Richie and herself killed by Ed]].

* JekyllAndHyde: Normal Ed Avery is a somewhat morose sad sack of a teacher but an otherwise good husband, teacher and father. Ed Avery high on cortisone is a dangerously unstable MoodSwinger with delusions of grandeur [[spoiler:and who tries to murder his son]].
* MoodSwinger: A side-effect of cortisone is that it can induce depressive episodes as a consequence of the high it provides to Ed. This makes his lows even worse and this agitates his mood. His moods can go from confident to violently angry to menacing and bullying and then back to general calmness in a jiffy.
* MortonsFork: Lou and Ed Avery know that the cortisone drug has side-effects that make her husband erratic and unstable. But if he doesn't take cortisone he will die within a year as a result of arterial inflammation. They can't afford more visits to the hospital, and they can't withstand the stigma and expenses of going to a clinic. So Lou more or less feels she has to accept enabling and forcing herself and her son to enable, a crazy, unstable and violent individual.

* PaterFamilicide: [[spoiler:In the climax when Cortisone!Ed decides to kill his son, his wife Lou tries desperately to talk him out of it, to which Ed replies, "You don't expect to go on living after this, do you?". Proving that after he kills his son Richie, he plans to kill his wife and then himself]].

** ''Film/AmericanBeauty'' which also dealt with a middle-aged father of a family developing a mid-life crisis, experimenting with drugs and alienation and angst about his role as family man.
** ''Series/BreakingBad'' a drama about a teacher frustrated with his low-paying job, failed ambitions and who becomes unstable after a fatal medical condition makes him drastically change his life.
** Creator/MartinScorsese sees this as one to Ray's previous film, ''Film/RebelWithoutACause'' another film about StepfordSuburbia which dealt with teenagers and more or less presented a caricature portrayal of parents. ''Bigger Than Life'' portrays the same kind of environment from the view of the parents.
** [[invoked]]Creator/NicholasRay was greatly inspired by Creator/ArthurMiller's ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman'' and he saw this film as a SpiritualAdaptation of the same idea of a "working-class tragedy" and the failure deriving from the hero living and stretching himself beyond his means.

* TitleDrop: The pagequote refers to the article "Ten Feet Tall" from which it is based.
* UnbuiltTrope: ''Bigger Than Life'' is one of many films made in TheFifties that cast a darker light on some of the obsessions of that decade: namely, the suburban "keeping up with the Jones" mentality(here shown as an attempt by a family straining themselves and living out of their means), ConspicuousConsumption, nuclear family (which amounts to a father becoming a tyrant of the home), and moreover dealing with prescription drug abuse far before it became a major public issue in American society.

* ICouldaBeenAContender: Ed Avery is regarded as a brilliant schoolteacher and in college he apparently played a crucial part in winning a football trophy. He's generally frustrated with his life as a lowly paid, overworked family man, with a dull social life and the cortisone abuse magnifies those frustrations by making him overcompensate for missing out, resulting in spending sprees, attempts at educational reform in the high school and in his view, taking an active view in his son's rearing. The house itself is filled with travel posters to European countries which Ed wants to visit but can't.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bigger_than_life.jpg]]

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 {{Melodrama}}, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role. Mason also served as producer.

The film is based on an article for the New Yorker called ''Ten Feet Tall'' by the famous medical writer Berton Roueché[[note]]Some of whose writings inspired ''Series/{{House}}''[[/note]]. It's one of the first films to deal with the problems of prescription drugs and its side effects.

* AbusiveParents: Cortisone!Ed is progressively nasty and abusive to his own son, emotionally and psychologically, withholding food to force him to improve math and [[spoiler:in the finale tries to murder him]].

* DaylightHorror: The film takes place in bright interiors and daylight, but it gets progressively more and more disturbing as Avery gets crazier and crazier. [[spoiler:In the finale when Avery tries to kill his son, it takes place in broad day time]].

* MoodSwinger: Cortisone provides such a high to Ed that his lows get even worse and this agitates his mood. His moods can go from confident to violently angry to menacing and bullying and then back to general calmness in a jiffy.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 ((Melodrama)), directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role. Mason also served as producer.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role. Mason also served as producer.

* SpiritualSuccessor: It has quite a few.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring Creator/JamesMason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring James Mason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMatthau in a supporting role.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring James Mason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Walter Mathau in a supporting role.

** ''Film/AmericanBeauty'' which also dealt with a teacher developing a mid-life crisis, experimenting with drugs and alienation and angst about his role as family man.

** Creator/MartinScorsese sees this as one to ''Film/RebelWithoutACause'' another film about StepfordSuburbia which dealt with teenagers and more or less presented a caricature portrayal of parents. ''Bigger Than Life'' portrays the same kind of environment from the view of the parents.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring James Mason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Walter Mathau in a supporting role. The film is based on an article for the New Yorker called ''Ten Feet Tall'' by the famous medical writer Berton Roueché[[note]]Some of whose writings inspired ''Series/{{House}}''[[/note]]. It's one of the first films to deal with the problems of prescription drugs and its side effects.

* StepfordSuburbia: One of many films made in TheFifties that offered UnbuiltTrope GenreDeconstruction of that lifestyle.

''Bigger Than Life'' is a 1956 Melodrama, directed by Creator/NicholasRay, starring James Mason, Barbara Bush, Christopher Olsen and Creator/WalterMathau in a supporting role. The film is based on an article for the New Yorker called ''Ten Feet Tall'' by the famous medical writer Berton Roueché[[note]]Some of whose writings inspired ''Series/{{House}}''[[/note]]. It's one of the first films to deal with the problems of prescription drugs and its side effects.