Directed by Nicholas Ray • 1956 • United States
Starring James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau
Though ignored at the time of its release, Nicholas Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE is now recognized as one of the great American films of the 1950s. When a friendly, successful suburban teacher and father (James Mason, in one of his most indelible roles) is prescribed cortisone for a painful, possibly fatal affliction, he grows dangerously addicted to the experimental drug, resulting in his transformation into a psychotic and ultimately violent household despot. This Eisenhower-era throat-grabber, shot in expressive CinemaScope, is an excoriating take on the nuclear family. That it came in the day of “Father Knows Best” makes it all the more shocking—and wildly entertaining.
Up Next in Murderous Melodramas
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Written on the Wind
Directed by Douglas Sirk • 1956 • United States
Starring Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert StackThe Technicolor expressionism of Douglas Sirk reached a fever pitch with this operatic tragedy, which finds the director pushing his florid visuals and his critiques of American culture to their sub...
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No Down Payment
Directed by Martin Ritt • 1957 • United States
Starring Joanne Woodward, Sheree North, Tony RandallSex, alcoholism, and racial tensions roil a suburban California subdivision in this subversive deconstruction of 1950s conformity, which combines deep-dish melodrama with the socially conscious se...
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Some Came Running
Directed by Vincente Minnelli • 1958 • United States
Starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaineMaster stylist Vincente Minnelli applies his spectacular visual flair to this feverish melodrama, a scorching indictment of small-town hypocrisy that sets every inch of the CinemaScope fram...
