Monday, January 6, 2014

Movie – The Big Heat (1953)

In my parent post for this set of Gloria Grahame movies I mentioned that she had been twice nominated for Oscars, winning once, but that I felt she should have been nominated two other times.  One of those I discussed in my review of In a Lonely Place.  The Big Heat is the other.  I was surprised when I found out she wasn’t the first choice to play the part she did.  The producers wanted Marilyn Monroe, but she would have cost too much, so they “settled” for Grahame.  I can’t imagine Monroe in Grahame’s role in this film, especially with the grit that is needed for it.  The Big Heat is not a nice film.  The bad guys are really bad, and even the good guy, driven by revenge, does things that are not much better.  The title of the film is very fitting.

Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is assigned to investigate the suicide of another cop named Tom Duncan.  It should be an open and shut case, but a mistress of Duncan’s comes forward and says that there’s no way that he killed himself.  Besides the fact that a mistress even exists, Duncan’s widow Bertha (Jeanette Nolan) is also angered when Bannion starts asking questions about how Duncan could have afforded houses for both his wife and his mistress on his cop’s salary.  Bannion’s boss reads him the riot act for disturbing the widow.  He just wants Bannion to close the case.

As we quickly come to find out, Bannion may be the only honest cop on the force.  And even those that aren’t on the payroll of the mob boss are cowards who don’t dare make a stand.

After Duncan’s mistress is tortured and killed Bannion takes on the city’s mob boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby), even though it’s not his case.  It’s also one of the dumbest things Lagana thinks he’s ever seen since it’s an open secret that he controls the cops.  The Police Commissioner is even a poker buddy of Lagana and his right hand man Vince Stone (a scary good Lee Marvin).  Bannion is soon getting anonymous threats, yet he continues his investigation.  When violence hits very close to home, and his own police force won’t investigate it, he resigns as a Detective to start a one man search to figure out what is going on and to get revenge.

His investigation leads him to Debby Marsh (Grahame), the girlfriend of Stone.  Bannion tries to get all high and mighty with her, pointing out that she’s living on mob money.  Her response is a matter of fact, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.  Believe me, rich is better.”  It’s lines like that that I just can’t picture Monroe delivering with the same level of apparent real world experience.

Unfortunately for Marsh, she was spotted talking to Bannion and in response her boyfriend Stone horrifically injures her.  He leaves her alive, though, and she starts to help Bannion with his investigation.  And despite what happened to her, she almost becomes the moral voice of reason when Bannion has sunk so low into his desire for revenge that he’s going to kill someone.  Marsh knows he’s a good man and that there would be no coming back from that for him.  Instead, she takes matters into her own hands.  Where the mystery leads may be someplace you do not expect.

Fritz Lang directed this film.  He made a very interesting transition from making German expressionistic films to making American noir films.  When I think of Metropolis and The Big Heat together they seem so different that it’s tough to imagine they came from the same man.  And it’s not just a “career is failing so he did bad B movies” situation, either.  Lang did a very good job with several of his later noir films, including this one.

Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Lee Marvin are the stand outs in this film.  Each of them approached their roles with a lot of seriousness.  The anger expressed in the movie feels like it’s coming from real situations.

If you hate noir films then you should probably avoid this one.  For everyone else, if it sounds interesting then I recommend you give it a try.

Chip’s Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

11 comments:

  1. I'd heard so much about the coffee scene that I was surprised by the tragedy that happens to Glenn Ford earlier in the film. It's a pretty strong noir and feels pretty modern given its time period. I'm thinking 3 stars is about right, though.

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    1. I knew nothing about the film going in, so I was shocked by both, although I knew some kind of bad thing had to happen to Ford's character.

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  2. Love this one, mostly because of how angry it is. There's a level that this film reaches such vitriol that it's fascinating to watch.

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    1. It surprised me for the time period it was made in. I haven't ever heard about problems with the Production Code, though.

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  3. I love this film! I was really surprised at the blatant innuendo with Bannion and his wife early in the film. I reviewed this at on old blog and here's a bit of what I said: "Lee Marvin is so believably sadistic that one wonders how he got any dates after this movie. Gloria Grahame gets all the good lines in The Big Heat. Bannion is no wit, but he is methodical, honest, and pissed."

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    1. Marvin really was something else, wasn't he? And you're right that Grahame got a lot of good lines (i.e. sisters under the mink).

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  4. it's almost embarrassing how few film noir I've seen, so many to catch up on. I've liked the Fritz Lang films I've seen so far, so I'll add The Big Heat to my list.

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    1. I haven't reviewed it here, but another noir I'd suggest is Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas in only his second film, but already you could tell he was going to be something.

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    2. Thanks for the suggestion. Out of the Past is in my top 100, it's probably my favorite film noir (so far)

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  5. Love this film all the way down to its mean, cold heart. It's without question my favorite Gloria Grahame performance and I think why she went un-nominated in a year where she should have won is the misfortune of her winning the year before for her nothing role in The Bad and the Beautiful. She gives a nice performance in that film but the role's a nothing to win a prize for. I think the academy felt she had been rewarded so they ignored her textured work in Big Heat. A shame.

    As for Monroe playing Debbie surely she would have given a different interpretation of the role but at the time she wasn't "Marilyn Monroe" quite yet, though within the year she would be and she had given a very sly reading of the rapacious tramp in Niagara. So while I can't envision a better Debbie than Gloria Grahame's I can see Marilyn giving an interesting performance. Lang must have had a vision of her in the role since he was the one who had requested her and had worked with her before in Clash by Night in one of her more low-key roles as the cannery worker girlfriend of Stanwyck's brother.

    You mentioned Ford and Marvin as well as Grahame but the other performance that added another touch of venom to the mix came from Jeanette Nolan as the sweet as pie to the world/poisonous in private cop widow Bertha Duncan. She plays it just right.

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    1. Thanks for the in-depth comment. You are probably right about why she didn't get nominated. And yes, Nolan is also quite poisonous in this film, isn't she?

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