A handful of hope
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A handful of hope |
| Original title | Bigger Than Life |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Nicholas Ray |
| script |
Cyril Hume , Richard Maibaum , Clifford Odets |
| production |
James Mason for 20th Century Fox |
| music | David Raksin |
| camera | Joseph MacDonald |
| cut | Louis R. Loeffler |
| occupation | |
| |
A handful of hope (original title Bigger Than Life , in Austria as man or the devil ) is an American drama directed by Nicholas Ray from 1956 . The film is loosely based on Ten Feet Tall , published in 1955 in The New Yorker magazine , written by writer and physician Berton Roueché , about the negative side effects of cortisone treatment .
action
Ed Avery lives with his wife Lou and their son Richie in a pretty house with a garden. In his work as a teacher he is valued by colleagues and students, but his income is only mediocre. In order to be able to offer his family a good standard of living, he also works in the afternoon in a taxi switchboard . Out of shame, he hides his second job from Lou, who, because of the inexplicable absence of her husband, secretly suspects he is having an affair. The exhausting working days wear out Ed's health, he gets pain and finally several attacks of weakness. The doctors diagnosed him with polyarteritis nodosa in the hospital . Normally he would have to live with it for less than a year, but the specialist Dr. Ruric suggests a treatment with a new kind of "miracle drug" - a kind of cortisone . After starting treatment with the wonder drug, Ed's health improves and he can eventually return to his family.
Ed is full of energy in his everyday life and everything seems perfect. However, he begins to take more than the prescribed amount of cortisone, which is reflected in his social behavior. On a parenting day, he caused a stir among parents and colleagues with demands for a tough upbringing and statements that children are dumber than chimpanzees . Although his treatment has already strained the family's financial budget, he spends a lot of money buying his wife expensive clothes. He quits his job at the taxi company and believes that he is destined for a great career without, however, developing concrete plans. Ed expresses disdain for the, in his view, dreary and meaningless middle-class life he has led so far.
A shadow is falling more and more on his coexistence with Lou and Richie, who are unsettled by his manic-depressive attacks. When his friend, the PE teacher Wally Gibbs, is concerned about Ed's strange behavior and discusses it with Lou, he suddenly suspects him of having an affair with his wife. Wally finds an article in the newspaper about the behavior of other patients who were also prescribed cortisone. Ed is increasingly making the highest moral and intellectual demands on his environment and is superior to everyone - including Lou, which is why he is considering leaving her. Richie in particular suffers from his father, who gives him complicated school assignments and withholds food until he has solved them. Lou considers consulting a psychiatrist , but fears that Ed's teaching career would end, and hesitates to take her step.
The situation escalates when Richie tries to hide the miracle pills after another fit of anger from his father and is caught by him. Ed, now mentally completely confused, reads the passage in the Bible about Abraham's near-murder of his son Isaac . As he sees the upbringing and development of his son as a failure, he decides to kill his son, his wife and himself. At the last minute, Wally, whom Lou had called, appears and is able to save the family's life. Ed is in a psychiatry brought where he wakes up in a normal mental state again and apologized to his family. Dr. Norton, the family doctor, had previously given Lou a choice: Either Ed would not be given cortisone again and would then soon die - or she would decide, despite her previous experiences, that Ed would continue to receive cortisone (albeit under strict allocation in the future). Lou decides for the latter and thus there is a chance for a happy coexistence in the future.
background
Berton Roueché's text Ten Feet Tall represented the actual case of a New York teacher who became seriously ill with cortisone and had manic attacks, which he took out on his family and students. Cortisone was introduced at the end of the 1940s and was regarded by many consumers as a new miracle drug when the film was made. The actual case of the teacher had occurred back in 1948, when cortisone was new to the market, and by the mid-1950s the side effects of cortisone were well known or contained. Even so, several pharmaceutical companies reacted nervously to the film. According to the later director Gavin Lambert , who worked with Bigger Than Life as personal assistant and advisor to Nicholas Ray, the pharmaceutical companies ensured an at least partially tamed script with their influence.
Nicholas Ray used the color orange in the clothes of leading actress Barbara Rush to represent the looming danger.
reception
Many editors at the Cahiers du Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague considered Bigger Than Life a masterpiece. Jean-Luc Godard put the film on his personal top ten list of the ten best American sound films in 1963.
The Catholic film service was less enthusiastic: “In his intoxication he tyrannizes the family and tries to kill his son. An allegedly authentic case of illness serves as the basis for a sensationally developed petty bourgeois drama that is only of interest because of James Mason's oppressive portrayal. Nicholas Ray once again addresses one of his central themes of the (failed) search for happiness. "
Today Bigger Than Life receives largely positive reviews, so 26 of the 28 reviews on the American critic portal Rotten Tomatoes are positive, which means a positive rating of 95%. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that the real theme of the "deeply disturbing" film was not so much the miracle pill, but rather the value system of the American middle class with the topics of money, education, religion, patriarchy and the desire to advance professionally. His conclusion on Bigger Than Life is, "It's hard to think of any other Hollywood movie that says more about the plain horror of normal American family life during the 1950s."
Web links
- A handful of hope in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sam Wasson: Bigger Than Life: The Picture, the Production, the Press. In: Senses of Cinema. February 7, 2006, Retrieved February 9, 2020 (American English).
- ↑ Bigger Than Life (1956) - IMDb. Retrieved February 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Sam Wasson: Bigger Than Life: The Picture, the Production, the Press. In: Senses of Cinema. February 7, 2006, Retrieved February 9, 2020 (American English).
- ↑ Nicholas Ray: I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies . Ed .: Susan Ray. University of California Press, 1993, pp. 58 .
- ↑ in film | December 2nd, 2013 2 Comments: A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best American Films Ever Made (1963). In: Open Culture. Retrieved August 7, 2019 (American English).
- ↑ A Handful of Hope (1956). Retrieved August 7, 2019 .
- ↑ Bigger Than Life (1956). Retrieved August 7, 2019 .
- ↑ Jonathan Rosenbaum: Bigger Than Life. Retrieved August 7, 2019 .