The Big Heat (1953)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Sydney Boehm (screenplay)
William P. McGivern (Saturday Evening Post serial)

Release Date:

14 October 1953 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

A hard cop and a soft dame!

Plot:

Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate.

Plot Keywords:

B Girl | Mob | Mob Boss | Police | Suicide

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Glenn Ford	...	Det. Sgt. Dave Bannion
Gloria Grahame	...	Debby Marsh
Jocelyn Brando	...	Katie Bannion
Alexander Scourby	...	Mike Lagana
Lee Marvin	...	Vince Stone
Jeanette Nolan	...	Bertha Duncan
Peter Whitney	...	Tierney
Willis Bouchey	...	Lt. Ted Wilks
Robert Burton	...	Det. Gus Burke
Adam Williams	...	Larry Gordon
Howard Wendell	...	Police Commissioner Higgins
Chris Alcaide	...	George Rose
Michael Granger	...	Hugo (police clerk)
Dorothy Green	...	Lucy Chapman
Carolyn Jones	...	Doris

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Norway:16 | UK:15 (re-rating) (1988) | UK:X (original rating) | Canada:G (Nova Scotia/Québec) | Germany:16 (nf) (re-rating) | West Germany:18 (nf) (original rating) | South Korea:15 | Finland:(Banned) | Finland:K-16 (re-rating) (1966) | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (certificate #16549) | Australia:PG | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

When Lee Marvin first sees Glenn Ford face to face, the music in the background is "Put the Blame on Mame," a reference to Ford's performance in Gilda (1946).

Goofs:

Continuity: The street address for the junk yard on Bannyon's list is "101", yet the number "1024" is seen on a large sign over the yard's shed.

Quotes:

Lt. Ted Wilks: It was bad judgment to bother a cop's widow about the love life of her husband.
Dave Bannion: Good or bad, it was my judgment.
Lt. Ted Wilks: You're missing the point. I'm the one that gets the pressure calls from upstairs. I'm the one that has to explain. You don't keep an office like this very long stepping on a lot of corns.
Dave Bannion: You want me to go upstairs and explain?
Lt. Ted Wilks: Not you. You're a corn stepper by instinct.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Finding Forrester (2000)

Soundtrack:

Put the Blame on Mame

Gritty, brutal, intense and powerful – a fantastic pot-boiler than stands out almost half a century later

An honest, family man cop with a wife and daughter is put onto the investigation of another cop's suicide. He closes the case as suicide due to ill health. However when a women tells him another story and is promptly killed, Bannion just investigates further to find that powerful criminals and powerful politicians share the same table at dinner. When his family is split in an attack meant for him he loses his job and becomes bitter – he starts to become more like his enemies as he pursues them.

This is a hardboiled thriller that would still stand up today as a tough film – violence and attitudes that make it feel more modern than it is. The story follows the descent of family man Bannion into violence and bitterness when he not only loses what is important to him, but when he finds that corruption at high levels has fed down into rank and file officers causing him to stand out when he tries to catch a criminal.

The brutality of this film shouldn't be underestimated – Fritz Lang is no softy! Here we have women beaten and killed, we have sex crimes, we have a women disfigured by scalding coffee in her face. Of course all these things are unseen but this was the 50's! However it is still powerful and adds to the intensity of the film. The story may well have been done many times now – but imagine seeing something like this back then!

The cast are great. Ford descends into bitterness really well and seems at ease as both thug and family man. The female cast are good in different ways but the one that catches the eye is a young Lee Marvin. I suspect Marvin got fame because his coffee attack stuck in people's minds – even today he is best know as a tough guy in the movies.

Overall this is well worth hunting out – it is still being copied by many video thrillers and it just goes to show that you don't have to show gory or graphic violence on screen to be powerful, gritty or shocking.