Bigger Than Life

The films of Nicholas Ray promise delicious surprises. They appear to adorn the shiny cloak of Hollywood studio production, only to shred those genre conventions to pieces by the end. Johnny Guitar (1954) is a weird western. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is a weird teen film. Bigger than Life (1956) is a weird social …

Bigger Than Life Directed by Nicholas Ray United States, 1956 Leonard Cohen’s song Story of Isaac recontextualizes the biblical story to modern times with the lyrics, “You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children, you must not do it anymore. The scheme is not a vision if you never have been tempted by …