NFR Project: 'The Big Heat' (1953)

 NFR Project: “The Big Heat”

Dir: Fritz Lang

Scr: Sydney Boehm

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Charles Nelson

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1953

90 min.

Fritz Lang was a master at depicting the darkness of humanity. One of his earliest efforts, the film serial The Spiders (1919-1920) – possibly inspired by Feulliade’s Fantomas (1913) -- dealt with a crime syndicate. He directed a four-and-a-half hour film about the doings of Dr. Mabuse, a criminal mastermind (1922). He made Spies in 1928. He tracked a serial killer in M in 1931.

He fled Germany to avoid Nazi persecution. Once he came to Hollywood, he specialized in genre films. He engaged with crime in Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). The Big Heat is an off-beat noir, the culmination of his tough crime pictures, and its attendant attitude about humanity.

The story is told in complete deadpan, with very few stylistic flourishes. Lang is subverting the perverse content of the film by rendering it in a naturalistic manner. People do bad things; life goes on.

Here, Glenn Ford is Dave Bannion, a police sergeant trying to find out why a veteran cop killed himself. He talks to the lying widow (Jeanette Nolan), who is blackmailing the crime syndicate that had the officer in its pocket. He finds the cop’s girlfriend, who talks. She is soon found dead, having been tortured and murdered.

Bannion is ordered off the case, but he keeps probing. Ultimately, his wife is killed is their driveway by a car bomb meant for Dave. Bannion then accuses his higher-ups of corruption, and is suspended. He vows to keep searching for his wife’s killers.

Debby (Gloria Grahame), girlfriend of volatile, sadistic mob killer Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), grows to trust Dave and gives him information. When Vince finds out about her talking to the ex-cop, he brutally throws a pot of boiling coffee in her face. Scarred horribly, she goes to Bannion and fingers the man behind the car bombing. He is roughed up by Bannion and spills the beans, dooming him to an ugly fate as a snitch.

Bannion tails Stone. Debby goes to the policeman’s widow. If she dies, the damaging evidence her husband had on the mob will be revealed. Debby shoots her to death. She then lies in wait for Stone at his apartment. She throws hot coffee in his face, scalding him. He shoots her to death. Bannion rushes in and captures Stone. The corrupt police commissioner and the crime boss are indicted.

In Lang’s world, the bad do whatever they like, and the powers that be are paid off. Bannion is an ordinary, nice guy, but after his wife’s murder and expulsion from the force, he comes an avenging angel, grimly threatening to kill those he can’t squeeze information out of. Extrajudicial violence is the price the honest cop has to pay to see justice done.

Notably, all the women in the film with speaking parts get killed. It’s a reverse of the usual pattern of the noir protagonist being destroyed by a femme fatale. Here, the females are just collateral damage.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film (Registry in chronological order. Next time: Duck Amuck.