Thursday 27 May 2010

Bigger Than Life

Bigger Than Life – 1956, Nicholas Ray

Imagine if Requiem For a Dream had been made in the fifties. What would be the drug of choice, who would take it, and just how would it end up satirising contemporary social convention and unravel the truth behind The American Dream?

In ‘Requiem’ the drugs are heroin and television. The kids take Horse for fun, they just want to be chill. They don’t want to get caught up in all the bullshit that all the conformists take so seriously. They can see past all that man. But they are of course deluded themselves, and end up in junkie hell. The kid’s momma is addicted to her TV game shows, and the though of appearing on one of them. The amphetamines she takes to prepare for her appearance reinforce her delusion till she goes nuts and is sectioned. The drugs act as a catalyst to the dismantling of the dreams the characters (and the audience?) have, revealing how false they are.

And all of this goes down in a little James Mason film from 1956.
They don’t make trailers like this no more (yes that is the bad guy from North By North-West).



Bigger Than Life is about addiction to cortisone, and the setting is of course a thousand miles away from that of Requiem, but both films portray what was, at the time, a kind of norm.

James Mason’s stereotypical 50’s family life may not have been as common in reality as we may believe it was, looking back from Space Year 2010. But the reason we have a ‘vision’ of the fifties is because the fifties had the same vision. There were so many fifties films and TV shows depicting an idealised fifties America, that it was accepted as an accurate refection of people’s lives at the time (obviously I wasn’t there, and I’m no historian, and so I accept that my view on this may be complete bollocks but...meh).

By the time Requiem was made, we were all Post Modern and accustomed to seeing grim reality on screen for all it was. The collective delusion was over, but individual delusion still remains. Whereas fifties group delusion was perpetuated by ideology, contemporary individual delusion is driven by the whole MTV/media/advertising/internet-celebrity-worship thing.

Anyway, Bigger Than Life is worth a watch, I’m very keen on James Mason, so is Jim Jarmusch.

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