Movie Review – The Big Heat

The Big Heat (1953)
Written by Sydney Boehm
Directed by Fritz Lang

What is the Law? Who does it exist to protect? It’s becoming more evident to me, maybe to you too, that the Law as an institution in the States (as that is where I grew up) does not exist to protect me. If I benefit from it, that is an unintended benefit. The Law is in place to protect & serve the wealthy ownership class. The main prerogative of the police as an institution is to protect the rich & their property. If that means cracking the skulls of the plebs, they don’t shed a tear over that. The noir genre is full of characters who find themselves on the receiving end of these systems, and over the years, one subgenre has emerged: the rogue cop. It probably didn’t start here, but The Big Heat was likely one of the significant sparks to see this subgenre grow in popularity. It’s a very reactionary response to social injustice, continuing the fixation on hyper-individualist solutions.

Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in to investigate the suicide of fellow officer Tom Duncan. Duncan’s wife, Bertha, explains he’d been in poor health but hides away a letter he left that was addressed to the district attorney. Duncan’s mistress contradicts Bertha’s story; she says the cop had recently agreed to divorce his wife. Bannion notes that this deceased cop had a very nice house for someone with his pay, and days later, the city officials shut the investigation down. Bannion won’t let up, and this has dire consequences for him. Eventually, Bannion challenges his superiors and is put on suspension. That doesn’t stop him, and he learns how rotten the people who run this city are. The detective goes on a one-man crusade to “clean” things up, and events spiral into brutal acts of violence. 

The Big Heat was directed by film legend Fritz Lang. Lang was an Austrian filmmaker who was responsible for several films that helped define cinema in its early years, like Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler and the science fiction landmark Metropolis and the serial killer flick M. When the Nazis came to power, Lang saw many of his works being banned but done apologetically by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Lang was offered a position at a Nazi-approved film studio, but he was determined to leave for Paris as soon as possible. A few years later, he crossed the Atlantic to the United States, where he began the second act of his film career. Noir became a genre where the director’s expressionistic qualities worked perfectly, so much of this period saw him directing those films. 

I think Lang is a thoughtful director, but modern audiences may watch this and become uncomfortable. We have this penchant in American society to believe that the protagonist of a story is meant to be heroic. Noir challenges that with main characters who are always morally dubious, and Bannion is no exception. Every woman who comes in contact with Bannion ends up horribly wounded or dead, not by his hand. His actions have severe consequences for these women, and he seems completely cold to that fact. The detective operates from a stance of “moral duty” and “being a man.” The film asks us if the cost of masculinity is the destruction of femininity; what sort of a world are we creating? There’s a funny title many critics have assigned Bannion, an “homme fatale,” a play on the traditional “femme fatale” of the genre. 

What happens to Bannion is an intense dehumanization. He feels much of the loss inflicted on him by his enemies, even to the point that he might weep. But then a moment comes when the detective turns to stone; he acts only with hate. There’s a comment from Debby, one baddie’s moll (Gloria Grahame), that if Bannion were to kill a particular suspect, he would become like the men he hunts. She’s not wrong. The Big Heat occurs in a muddled universe, while Bannion may be viewed as a “moral angel of raging vengeance.” However, he’s also descending into a morass of evil. Is it fair to believe that he could take down the bad guys without suffering in some way? Probably not.

I couldn’t help but recall Stellan Skarsgard’s powerful speech as Luthen in Andor: “I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts […] My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down, there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.” These exact words could be spoken by Bannion, underlining the tragedy of justice when it sits on the shoulders of a single person to mete out. This is why collective responses to injustice are far better for society and individuals. 

A testament to Lang’s direction is that I had a hard time pinning Bannion down one way or the other. This is not an accident. Noir is the realm of moral ambiguity and horror. This is emphasized by the ghoulish face of Lee Marvin, a smirking jackanape, the primary stooge to the big bad. His relationship with Gloria Grahame’s Debby serves as a counter to Bannion and his wife. Debby is someone used by the gangster, abused, and literally left scarred. Their climax is the actual conclusion of the film despite it going on a bit longer. Debby is the one who tears apart the operation in a way that ripples through the network.

The Big Heat is a thematically-complicated film, and that is a good thing. We live in an era of popular cinema that often lacks moral complexity. Big themes may be brought up, but they are often watered down and sanitized with trite lessons that speak down to an audience perfectly capable of thinking about large, unwieldy ideas. Film noir is a genre that should never devolve into cops vs. robbers; it’s more than that. The noir is a space to look into the void, witness cruelty, and contemplate how our institutions do not operate in harmony with our human needs.