The Big Heat
by Fritz Lang
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alexander Scourby, Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Lee MarvinDirector: Fritz Lang
Brand: Sony
Cinematographer: Charles Lang
Editor: Charles Nelson
Producer: Robert Arthur
Writer: Sydney Boehm
Writer: William P. McGivern
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-18
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of The Big Heat
Movie Review: Riveting plot will keep you nailed to your seat
Summary: 4 Stars
'The Big Heat' is a film noir classic due to its original and riveting plot. The film draws you right in with the suicide of a police officer in his home and his widow, Bertha Duncan (played by Jeanette Nolan) who hides the suicide note which implicates Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby), the town's number one crime boss. Duncan concocts a plot to blackmail Lagana, making sure the suicide note is released to the press in the event of her death.
Assigned to investigate the suicide is Det. Sgt. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford). Bannion interviews Duncan who is uncooperative and hostile. Bannion then gets a tip from B-girl Lucy Chapman who insists that Duncan's husband didn't commit suicide and implied that he was on Lagana's payroll. (I had trouble believing that she would have met with Bannion in open view at the nightclub which easily tipped off the mobsters that she was spilling her guts). Bannion turns up dead the next day, the victim of multiple stab wounds and possible sexual assault by a psychopath (the coroner's report to Bannion on the B-girl's death foreshadows some of the more explicit scenes of violence to come).
When Bannion gets a phone call threatening his family at home, he decides to confront Lagana directly. Lagana is depicted as a man who seeks to project an image of a model citizen--he even has a picture of his mother on the wall and tells Bannion that he cared for her in his home right before her death a year before. Bannion isn't impressed by Lagana's phony resume and ends up slugging Lagana's bodyguard which outrages the crime boss further.
In a scene you can never forget, after Bannion gives his wife the car keys, she leaves to go on an errand while he's singing nursery songs to his daughter. Suddenly there's a tremendous explosion right outside the window. Bannion runs out to find his wife trapped in a burning car. He breaks the car window and pulls her out. But it's too late. She's the victim of a car bomb.
After the funeral (never seen on screen), Bannion meets with the Police Commissioner who suggests that his wife was murdered by criminals Bannion may have locked up in the past. It's clear that he doesn't want to investigate the possibility of Lagana's involvement. Bannion accuses the Commissioner of being in league with Lagana who promptly demands his resignation. Bannion turns in his badge but keeps his gun which he bought himself.
Bannion finds out from the crime lab that parts of the bomb are linked to an auto salvage shop. The owner at the shop won't tell him anything but after he leaves, a crippled woman who works at the shop as an office assistant, tells him that a man named Larry called the shop from a nightclub (The Retreat) where Bannion had met the recently deceased B-girl Chapman earlier. Unable to find out who Larry is, Bannion still makes the acquaintance of Lagana's right hand man, Vince Stone (played by a very young Lee Marvin) at the Retreat. Bannion prevents Stone from beating up a woman who he's been playing a game of dice with at the bar.
Stone's girlfriend, Debby Marsh (played by an over-the-top Gloria Grahame) comes on to Bannion and they end up at his hotel room. Bannion wants Debby to tell him who Larry is but she's more interested in having an affair with him. Later, after Vince finds out that Marsh has been talking with Bannion, he scalds her face with a pot of steaming hot coffee. With her face (and life) basically ruined, Marsh has no compunctions about revealing Larry's identity. Bannion confronts Larry Gordon, the sadistic hit-man hired by Vince to kill Chapman as well as the one responsible for the death of Bannion's wife. But Bannion doesn't kill him--he extracts the information he's been looking for: Bertha Duncan has been blackmailing Lagana all along with her now deceased husband's suicide note. He tells Gordon that he plans to let his mob associates know that he's a snitch.
Debby Marsh now seeks revenge on both Stone and Lagana. She bumps off Duncan (who is the actual femme fatale in this film noir) and then throws scalding hot coffee in Vince's face at this apartment (how she so easily got in is not explained). Stone then shoots Marsh just as Bannion arrives who gets in a shootout with him. Now out of bullets, Bannion has a chance to finish Stone off but decides to hand him into the police. A newspaper headline reveals that Lagana and the Police Commissioner (who was seen in an earlier scene playing cards with Stone and was a witness to Stone scalding Marsh with the hot coffee) have been indicted and presumably on their way to jail. Bannion is restored to his old job (why he doesn't get a promotion I have no idea) and once again is a respected member of the Police Force.
What sets 'The Big Heat' apart from some of the lesser "B-rated" film noirs is the complicated plot as well as director Fritz Lang's decision not to 'soft pedal' any of the violent scenes here. His message is that when criminals kill, they do so with no conscience. So the car bombing scene along with Lee Marvin's treatment of women (to the point where he has no pangs about throwing a pot of scalding coffee in a woman's face) is both explicit and shocking. The collusion of the 'respectable' Police Commissioner and the timidity Bannion's colleagues add to the overall atmosphere of dread. The Big Heat is by no means a 'perfect' film as it sometimes falls back into the typical sentimental moments of the B noir. The story however is most satisfying as it will keep you riveted in your seat throughout.
Summary of The Big Heat
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/27/2008 Run time: 89 minutes Rating: NrThere's a satisfying sense of closure to the definitive noir kick achieved in The Big Heat: its director, Fritz Lang, had forged early links from German expressionism to the emergence of film noir, so it's entirely logical that the expatriate director would help codify the genre with this brutal 1953 film. Visually, his scenes exemplify the bold contrasts, deep shadows, and heightened compositions that define the look of noir, and he matches that success with the darkly pessimistic themes of this revenge melodrama.
The story coheres around the suicide of a crooked cop, and the subsequent struggle of an honest detective, Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford), to navigate between a corrupt city government and a ruthless mobster to uncover the truth. Initially, the violence here seems almost timid by comparison to the more explicit carnage now commonplace in films, yet the story accelerates as its plot arcs toward Bannion's showdown with kingpin Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his psychotic henchman, the sadistic Vince Stone, given an indelible nastiness by Lee Marvin. When Bannion's wife is killed by a car bomb intended for the detective, both the hero and the story go ballistic: suspended from the force, he embarks on a crusade of revenge that suggests a template for Charles Bronson's Death Wish films, each step pushing Lagana and Stone toward a showdown. Bodies drop, dominoes tumbled by the escalating war between the obsessed Bannion and his increasingly vicious adversaries.
Lang's disciplined visual design and the performances (especially those of Ford, Marvin, Jeanette Nolan as the dead cop's scheming widow, and Gloria Grahame as Marvin's girlfriend) enable the film to transcend formula, as do several memorable action scenes--when an enraged Marvin hurls scalding coffee at the feisty Debby (Grahame), we're both shattered by the violence of his attack, and aware that he's shifted the balance of power. --Sam Sutherland
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