Bigger Than Life

...it’s remarkable that a major studio like Fox released a film as brutal and intense in its depiction of suburban despair as Nicholas Ray’s long-lost, little-seen 1956 masterpiece Bigger Than Life.

...it's evident from this harrowing account of domestic discord that Nicholas Ray had an (...) acute understanding of the suburban American psyche.

A startling, subversive work…

…one of the most intelligent, adult, and disquieting American films of the 1950s.

Ray's skills with colour, setting and performance are dazzling, and James Mason, who produced, has never been better as the overworked teacher who cracks up on a new drug, cortisone.