Bigger Than Life (Criterion) Ostensibly a
drama about prescription drug misuse and abuse and drawn from an article in The New Yorker, this portrait of a grade - school
teacher and middle class father (played by James Mason, who also produced and helped develop the project) is as much about adult male masculinity and responsibility as a husband and father, and the pressure on him to live up to the ideal, as Rebel Without a Cause is about the emotional realities of being an
American teenager.