THE BIG HEAT (86) (76 - second viewing)

Directed by: Fritz Lang (1953)

Starring: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin, Jocelyn Brando

The Pitch: A cop goes on a personal crusade against a gang of well-connected criminals when they murder his wife.

Theo Sez: The private-eye movie as filtered through the serious, sleeves-rolled-up post-war mood, with its emphasis on "realism" however brutal or unsavoury (both because, with the country on a (Cold) war footing, this was no time for frivolity, and because you have to know the full extent of a "social problem" before you can deal with it) ; as in THE ENFORCER or THE BIG COMBO the villains are organised criminals instead of the colourful Shady Characters of private-eye movies (though, e.g. the mendacious weeping widow here is just a tougher version of THE MALTESE FALCON's Iva Archer) - and, as in virtually everything after THE NAKED CITY, the hero is a lawman instead of a private dick, all the better to emphasise that what's onscreen is somehow "relevant". It's also a terrific film noir, with a pungent underworld atmosphere, some great lines and those baroque undertones (the heroine tearing off her bandages to reveal her scalded face) so beloved of Lang from DR. MABUSE to MOONFLEET ; and it's also, most memorably of all, a powerful picture of a man who's lost his humanity. Crippled by rage, helped only by the lame and the disfigured, this is a hero who - for all his rectitude - is almost as misanthropic as Mike Hammer in KISS ME DEADLY two years later. When the film ends he's got his job and his good name back - but, as the rather inconclusive final scene suggests, it'll be a long time before he fully regains his faith in people. [More good stuff on second viewing, notably the way just about every character is schizophrenic in some way - and Grahame, who accepts that "you have to take the good with the bad", is finally the heroine (carrying out a righteous murder, the ultimate good-bad act), while morally black-and-white Ford is left with nothing but his morality. The problem is pace, i.e. it didn't quite grab me on second viewing - plotting also seems a bit slapdash, e.g. it's annoying that the plot to kidnap Ford's daughter comes to nothing (though it makes for thematically valuable WW2 reference). Not quite as good as I remembered; still a classic, obviously.]