THIS FLY GOT HERSELF STRANGLED
Is it just little ole me, or is it time for another foray down film noir lane? In other words …
“Hey, I like this. Early nothing!”
By 1953 German expatriate Fritz Lang just about reached the end of his career in Hollywood, but he had more fine films in him than perhaps even he imagined. The Big Heat is as rough-n-tough and just as sharply observed as anything this always intense filmmaker ever did—which is high praise. Glenn Ford (yes 3:10 to YUMA’s Glen Ford) slips easily from good humor to vengeful ferocity as a police detective who goes off on a one-man crime cleanup crusade after mobsters execute his wife with a car bomb intended for him. Ford’s an unpretentious, trenchcoat wearing kind of guy who launches himself into the milieu of upper-crust gangland in pursuit of wealthy crime boss Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his high-living lieutenants, notably Vince Stone (an early and snarling Lee Marvin). It’s violent flashes will keep your adrenaline pumping, and the straightforward, just plain good-to-look-at Columbia Pictures “house style” cinematography typical of the 1950s, (and nicely handled herein by Charles Lang) will do the trick for your sense of time, space and place. But, the elements alone would make the picture a winner, but it assumes classic status because of the piquancy of the cop’s relationship with Stone’s saucy mistress, Debbie (Gloria Grahame).
“The main thing is to have the money. I've been rich and I've been poor. *Believe* me, rich is better.”
Like many noir women, she’s out to take her man for everything she can get. The brutish boyfriend doesn’t notice, or just doesn’t care, but when he blows his top and finally lets Debbie have it, it’s with a pot of boiling coffee to the face, in one of the most famous of all Hollywood shock scenes. The girl’s vulnerability now comes to the fore, and it’s both painful and exalting to watch as Debbie turns to the cop for help, tries to draw him out, and finally wins him over to her side, not merely as an ally, but as a person he can like and respect.
“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.”
