Good 50's Films: The Big Heat

1953 Film Noir
From Columbia Pictures
Directed by Fritz Lang

Starring
Glenn Ford
Gloria Grahame
Lee Marvin
Alexander Scourby
Jocelyn Brando
Jeanette Nolan
Adam Williams
Willis Bouchey
Robert Burton

As all film noir buffs know, this one stands among the best  half dozen ever made.  It feels like a tribute to every gangster flick ever made.  It is enlivened by a fluid plot, taut direction and just about the best acting these two leads ever gave us.  Any noir with Gloria Grahame guaranteed my attendance.  Never was there an actress more suited to the genre. 

There's no horsing around in getting it all laid out... it opens with a police sergeant shooting himself in the head in the den of his home.  Observing his wife (Nolan) coming down the stairs and walking over to check him, we just know something is not quite right.

A fellow detective (Ford) is sent to investigate and very quickly uncovers that the stench surrounding the suicide involves some unknown top cops and government officials who are on the take from a mob boss (Scourby).  In his investigation, Ford discovers a woman whom the dead man was seeing and after interviewing her, she is brutally murdered.

Ford's suspicions and ire increase after he is called in by his superiors and told to not interview Nolan again.  When he resists, he is fired. After he boldly goes to the Scourby's home during a society party and chastises him, the mob boss assures him he's going to pay.

Ford goes home and after spending some time with his wife (Brando) and child, they decide to go out for the evening.  As she starts to leave to pick up the babysitter the car explodes, killing her instantly.  Suffice it to say it's the killers who will need a babysitter.

Ford comes across Scourby's vicious henchman (Marvin) and his sassy moll (Grahame) at a bar.  Ford accosts Marvin and forces him to leave.  Grahame stays behind and sidles up to Ford, more or less toying with him.  She likes to toy.  She brings up his wife, not knowing she was killed.  Ford clearly doesn't like her.  He couldn't imagine a woman more different from his wife.

She then returns to Marvin and this scene... the movie's most famous:

Still hysterical, she runs to Ford and with vengeance at fever pitch, she blurts out all she knows and all that Ford has wanted to know.  This takes the story into its final quarter where Ford cleans up things just the way audiences want him to.  Grahame, obviously the tramp with the heart of gold, helps him out, to say the least.  Watching it all unfold is just bloody good fun.  

As a noir The Big Heat is a classic in one respect because it has keen attention to most all of the noir basics... dark, often wet streets, intriguing lighting, moody cops, bad girls, nasty thugs and vicious crimes.  Characters are dispatched like clockwork including an interesting aspect for most any movie... four women die.  I think its classic status is also deserved because there is no waste... every scene has a clear beginning, middle and end... like brief stories standing on their own.  Bravo to writer Sydney Boehm, a former crime reporter.

The roots of film noir can be traced back to German film-making and much of the success of The Big Heat can certainly be credited to its Vienna-born director, Fritz Lang, who was raised in German cinema.  He was well-known for and highly-trusted to deliver exciting stories that often dealt with the common man against a bureaucracy and exploring the abuse of power. 

Lang, tight-fisted, very controlling and sarcastic, was obsessed with time and detail and when either of them didn't go as he expected they would, he went bonkers.  On most of his sets, he had to have a patsy, someone who suffered under his wrath.  For this outing it was Grahame.  She had said before they worked together that she  liked directors who kept a tight rein on a set.  She must have meant reining in coworkers because she herself was never easy to work with.  She wasn't malicious but rather unreliable in that she could never re-do a take the same way she'd done before and she would often not stand where the director had instructed.  And it was standard fare for her to hold up production as she fussed with her hair, makeup and costumes.

In her defense she usually just wanted to try something different, to give her interpretation.  She had played the bad girl so often, on screen and off, that she often thought she knew what she was doing.  Some directors allow great freedom of expression and are willing to try it as an actor suggests, and some, like Lang, were not.  When he got too out of control with her, usually Ford would step in.  He served as a great mediator since he liked both of them.

Perhaps what is most interesting is that most critics and Grahame's own fans would probably consider this role to be her best and I might have to agree.  On the other hand, I thought most of her 50's work was dazzling.

Ford also turned in one of his best performances, right up there with Gilda (1946) and Blackboard Jungle (1955).  I'm not sure I think there were any other particularly astonishing performances because he had little range as an actor and to me it made him not very interesting.  I never went to a film because Ford was in it.  Nonetheless, as with Heat and Gilda, I find it noteworthy what two lusty actresses (Rita Hayworth in the latter) could bring out in him.  He was blistering here, relentless in his pursuit of justice and harsh with his superiors, flirting with instability and yet a loving family man and ultimately understanding of Grahame's character.

Lee Marvin gives a performance that is riveting in its sense of menace and alarm.  He was an actor who had to pay his dues before he made it big but once he did (and switched to good guy parts), he was never as fascinating to watch.  I thought he was one of the best villains of all time.

Character actress Jeanette Nolan never had a role as prominent or as good as the ice-cold widow who holds the key to all that is troublesome for the others.  Her scene with Grahame toward the finale is another of the film's best.

Jocelyn Brando, making her film debut, is one of the film's few thoroughly nice characters.  Marlon's older sister went on to have not much of a career. 

 Alexander Scourby was usually a villain in his films and with good reason... few could compare to him in his quiet pomposity and hateful stares.  He was always right out there in his villainy.  It would not have been easy putting him in a plot where one wonders which of several people could be the killer because one just knew it was Scourby.

The Big Heat was a hit with critics and the public from the moment of its release.  In 2001 it was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry who proclaimed it to be one of the great post-war noir films.  It pointed out that it managed to be both stylized and brutally realistic, a signature of its director, Fritz Lang.

If you haven't seen it or have but don't much remember much, correct that and treat yourself to a rip-snorting 89 minutes.

Next posting:

What If Kate Had Met Bette