Bigger Than Life (1956/Criterion Collection Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B-
Nicholas
Ray was a great director and could produce classics in any film frame or
format. This included his transition to
making widescreen films, starting with CinemaScope classics like Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and
culminating in epic event films like the amusing Biblical epic King Of Kings (1961) and 55 Days At Peking (1963), but he was
also capable of making intimate films in the wide frame and Criterion has
released fan favorite Bigger Than Life
with the great James Mason as a happy family man and teacher who finds out he
may not have long to live.
Mason,
the greatest risk-taker of his generation, co-produced the film and also sports
a great screenplay mainly written by Cyril Hume (the original 1932 Tarzan – The Ape Man, Forbidden Planet) and Richard Maibaum (Ransom!, 13 films in the James Bond
franchise) that holds up very well, is exceptionally intelligent and is
melodrama without its usual setbacks and phoniness. A great supporting cats including Barbara
Rush (Magnificent Obsession, It Came From Outer Space) as his wife,
Walter Matthau and Christopher Olsen (yes, the brother of original Brady Bunch daughter Susan Olsen) all
mesh well in what feels like one of the most honest films about 1950s families
and family life.
But it is
star Mason who shines in a not-so-glamorous role, yet the drug angle was bold
for its time and holds up. In addition,
the locations and look of the film are an interesting (and intentional mix) of
modernism and a look of the past that lingers and mixes with it. Not simply a gilded cage look, the
misé-en-scene suggests a more complicated sense of freedom and trap at the same
time, with the scope framing not necessarily offering more cinematic
space. On Blu-ray from Criterion, you
get to really appreciate how fine a film this is, even where it has undeniably
dated in parts.
The 1080p
2.55 X 1 digital High Definition image is one of the first of the early wider
CinemaScope films to see a Blu-ray release and was done at 4K resolution. The frame was later reduced to 2.35 X 1 where
it has stayed in various formats to this day as the official ratio for
scope. It is also the first of the older
Fox films to make it to the format to date.
Though some shots can look bad, the two-lens system has its distortions
and optical transitions have detail degrades, the color is exceptionally
reproduced, very solid and only Jailhouse
Rock (a black and white film, now on Blu-ray and reviewed on the similar,
obsolete HD-DVD format elsewhere on this site) has better definition while the
restoration here is equal to Forbidden
Planet (due on Blu-ray, also covered on the obsolete HD-DVD format
elsewhere on this site) as the only other color scope HD release we have to
compare. Director of Photography Joseph
MacDonald, A.S.C., was also a groundbreaker in the scope format all the way to
his final work on The Sand Pebbles
(1966, see Blu-ray on this site) and Mackenna’s
Gold (1969) going back to How To
Marry A Millionaire in 1953. His
choices throughout only enhance the story.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 2.0 Mono comes from an original monophonic
soundmaster, but the film had been issued in 4-track magnetic stereo in its
better 35mm release prints, but it seems those tracks have been sadly lost for
good. With that said, the sound is fine
for what we get and has been cleaned up, but shows its age in some slight
compression. David Raskin (The Big Combo, Al Capone (1959)) delivers one of his best-ever music scores.
Extras
include a booklet with tech information, illustrations and B. Kite essay, new
video interview with Susan Ray (widow of the director and editor of I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making
Movies), new video appreciation of the film with author Jonathan Lethem, theatrical
trailer, feature-length audio commentary track by critic/writer Geoff Andrew (The Films Of Nicholas Ray) and 1977
half-hour TV special Profile Of Nicholas
Ray.
- Nicholas Sheffo
