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Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford feel The Big Heat coming on |
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Glenn Ford (Det Sgt Dave Bannion), Gloria Grahame
(Debby Marsh), Lee Marvin (Vince Stone), Jeanette Nolan (Bertha Duncan),
Alexander Scourby (Mike Lagana), Jocelyn Brando (Katie Bannion), Adam Williams
(Larry Gordon), Kathyn Eames (Marge), Willis Bouchey (Lt Ted Wilks)
Films like Fritz Lang’s The
Big Heat were generally seen at the time as easy-to-overlook pulp
thrillers. Today however, they are seen as classics and few look as ahead of
their time as The Big Heat, a
skilfully constructed, almost nihilistic, revenge thriller that turns its view
of America into that of a land big, grim and full of corruption.
Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in
when a senior policeman is found to have committed suicide. All is not what it
seems though: the wife Bertha (Jeanette Duncan) doesn’t seem as sad as she
should, there are conflicting reports that the death might be suicide and the
dead man’s possible lover is found brutally killed shortly after Bannion talks
to her. Bannion is a stubborn, bull-in-a-China-shop type, so he quickly assumes
smooth local gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) is connected up in all
this, not least after his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) receives a threatening
phone call. But Bannion’s methods lead to tragedy, and he soon finds himself
going rogue to find justice, with the eventual help of Debby Marsh (Gloria
Grahame), gangster’s moll of brutal sadist and Langana lieutenant Vince Stone
(Lee Marvin).
Lang’s film is a strikingly un-rose tinted view of America.
The very first shot of the movie is a gun, and violence is endemic in this corrupt
world, where justice is for sale. We barely see a character who doesn’t have
some whiff of corruption. Bannion finds cops doing guard duty outside Lagana’s
home while he throws a party and half the higher-ups in the department are
either in the pocket of the gangsters, or determined to do as little as
possible to rock the boat. The lives of the families of those causing trouble
for this system don’t account for much either, with any unpalatable truths
brushed firmly under the carpet.
Thown into the middle of this is Glenn Ford’s Detective
Bannion. At first glance Bannion looks like exactly the hero we would want – a
straight-down-the-line type who says what he thinks, and determined to let
nothing stand in the way of, or water down, his investigation. Better known for
comedies, Glenn Ford is very good as this bullish man, who very clearly thinks
of himself as “the only good cop in town”, and whose determination to stop at
nothing very soon tips over into recklessness. Because reckless is what he is:
Bannion is fixated on revenge after a tragic attack on his family, and he has
no compunction – or even it seems moral awareness – that this path causes
danger and consequences for other people around him.
Bannion’s situation is largely self-inflicted – is it
sensible going straight to the house of a leading local gangster and
threatening and humiliating him? – and Bannion turns out to be largely a
destructive force for those who meet him. Most affected are the four female
characters he interacts with in the film. A mixture of innocent, corrupt, in
denial and cruel, all four of these women find themselves thrown into often
mortal danger, with Bannion barely stopping to consider the risks to them.
Bannion, it becomes clear, is the ultimate ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, willing
to accept collateral damage of almost any kind if it means he can take down the
bad guys who have done him wrong. It makes for an intriguing anti-hero at the
film’s centre, with Bannion increasingly resembling a sort of proto-type Dirty
Harry, the hard-boiled cop who’ll do things his way and damn the consequences.
Mind you, it doesn’t mean he isn’t right about the
corruption in this damn dirty town. Preening gangster Mike Lagana (played with
a wispy arrogance by Alexander Scourby) has everyone in his pocket, and
couldn’t give tuppence for any small fry causing him problems. First introduced
lazily in bed setting in chain events that will cover up the reason for the
suicide of a leading policeman, he has fingers in every pie. He’s also – the
film economically suggests – sexually indiscriminate and a bit of a mummy’s boy
to boot, sure signs of cadism in any 1950s detective story. His decadent home
and personal cowardice (for all his speed in ordering deaths) make his corruption
probably even more galling for straight-shooter Bannion.
In fact, I’m not sure Bannion can even accept Lagana as a
“worthy foe” and he increasingly zeroes in on Lagana’s number two, the brutish
Vince Stone as the man he intends to take down. Played with a star-making
swagger by Lee Marvin, Stone is a force of nature, an act-first-think-next-week
kind of guy, who terrorises people around him and will resort to anything from
fists to pots of boiling coffee to exact obedience. Marvin scowls and prowls
his way through the film like a caged bear, constantly on the verge of
violence. It’s a brilliant performance.
It also makes clear why he’s pushed Debby – played with a
wonderful fragility behind all her femme fatale looks by Gloria Grahame – so
far under his thumb. As she says, why intercede against anything he does when
she could be next to take a beating. Grahame is excellent as a woman who has
suppressed her conscience about what is going on around her, and learned to use
her sexuality as a tool for getting what she wants. Watching her slowly begin
to come to life as a moral force provides one of the film’s finest stories –
her desire to do the right thing and get revenge, a firm contrast with
Bannion’s more hardline goals.
All of this is packaged neatly and without fuss by Lang into
a superb indictment of America. Every official is at least shady, if not
outright bent. Every scene bubbles with the possibility of violence and danger.
The innocent are swiftly trampled and the heroes need to bring themselves down
to the same brutal, intimidating rough and tumble as the villains to have any
chance of cracking the crime. Bodies pile up, lives are ruined, but at the end
you still wonder if any of it will have any lasting impact. For Lang it feels
like America is a constant spiral of danger and corruption that begins and end
with a gun. Either way The Big Heat
is a true classic.
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