Bigger than Life
Lethem on Ray.

Großartiges Gespräch bei den Kollegen von Cinema Scope mit Jonathan Lethem über Nicholas Rays Bigger Than Life (1956):

LETHEM: Well, there’s a version of the fundamental paradox of ‘50s America. It’s alluded to in the film: the Cold War fears and the bomb, also McCarthyism. The whole incredible self-loathing paradox embedded in this apparently simple idea that “our enemy is trying to destroy our free American way of life.” The Communist enemy is like a race of insects. A faceless horde. Whereas in America, you’re allowed to be free and do anything you want, but any sign of disturbing behavior means you might be a Red, so we have to conform to one another, in order to prove that we are not the faceless horde—so we’re undergoing this constant self-scrutiny for difference. This describes a decade that contains both Allen Ginsberg and J. Edgar Hoover.

Bemerkenswert ist auch der Old School-Trailer mit James Mason: