Bigger Than Life (1956)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
A friendly, successful suburban teacher and father grows dangerously addicted to cortisone, resulting in his transformation into a household despot.
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What critics compared Bigger Than Life to
To buttress the meaning of his movie, Godard quotes from Dante, Holderlin, Brecht, and Louis Lumière, among others, and makes passing references to many movies, including Rio Bravo, Bigger than Life, Hatari!, Psycho, Vanina Vanini, The Big Knife, and his own Vivre sa vi.
Numerous posters for influential films are glimpsed in the background, while at one point Paul mentions Nicholas Ray’s classic film Bigger Than Life .
(We find out what's playing at the theaters in Rome: Rio Bravo and Bigger Than Life.
What started as a cautionary thriller about drug abuse (a topic already investigated to the hilt in a vastly superior movie, Bigger Than Life, with James Mason) now turns into a battle between two psychiatrists for the soul of their patient—one who keeps her medicated, the other who turns out to be her lesbian lover.
HH½ Director/editor/cinematographer Steven Soderbergh's alleged final theatrical film is as smart and stylish as one would expect, but like his other recent artsy genre essays — "Haywire," "Contagion" — its duller than its sources (in this case, "Bigger Than Life," "Basic Instinct" and "Psycho").
A History of Violence, which was written by Josh Olson, takes its cue from a tradition of films — Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet among them — that use the iconography of the American Dream to lead us toward an American nightmare.
This seems to cure Casey of his stated intimidation of men turning him into a dark creature with a note of Nicolas Ray’s Bigger Than Life .
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Per William Friedkin, negli anni ‘80, la forma sembra prevalere sul contenuto, come a voler esorcizzare (senza riuscirci, perché il suo cinema deve sempre essere bigger than life, e quindi bellissimo e perdente) le incomprensioni e i fraintendimenti che hanno accompagnato il suo cinema dopo il clamoroso e inaspettato successo di The Exorcist.
Aunque aparentemente esta es la primera vez que Iñárritu ha optado por una historia y un estilo bigger than life, era cuestión de tiempo que el director que pesó el alma en 21 gramos, halló respuestas a la ausencia en varios continentes a la vez en Babel y escaneó las sombras de la mente del actor en Birdman, subiese otro peldaño en su escalada al Olimpo de las ínfulas.