Gloria Grahame

I feel that Gloria Grahame's performance in The Big Heat is terrible. When she is scalded by boiling coffee, she seems more upset than in agonizing, searing pain. And when she then speaks to Glenn Ford after being bandaged-up, she's all jokey and philosophical about what would be in actuality, horrific injuries. And we of course later see her Hammer Horror scaring after she gives Lee Marvin a taste of his own blend. Marvin is a legendary badass, of course, so we can forgive Lang for not howling like madman after being scalded.

Lang's films are written about as if they were the toughest films of their day - really menacing and vicious. But to be quite honest, there isn't anything that special in The Big Heat, or most of his American films of the 50s. It's a pretty formulaic Film Noir and has a stagey style. Ford is very good, though, as is Lee Marvin. The contrast between the affluent hoodlum and the honest, moral detective isn't something I particularly like in many Film Noirs - I really can't stand Kazan's, Panic in the Streets. Sentimentality has no place in Noir. Early in The Big Heat, homey sentimentality is used to set up the shock moment when Bannion's wife is killed in what is very hokey and unconvincing car explosion - she doesn't have a scratch or soot-mark on her! Laughable for such an 'uncompromising auteur' like Lang. The music in the film is also mediocre. Lots of uncredited music - many of it stock - is used and Daniele Amfitheatrof provides more of his infamously decorative work. Legendary cinematographer Charles Lang, frankly, doesn't provide his best work here - Sudden Fear features far superior and inventive lighting - but then David Miller is no ones' darling. Overall, the film for me is a disappointment and has been overpraised. Don't get me wrong, I love Lang's work, the later German films - M; Metropolis; Spione; Die Nibelungen; Der Müde Tod and the Dr. Mabuse films - and some of the American productions, especially the magnificent Scarlet Street, Fury and Man Hunt, but many of his self-conscious Noirs are somewhat formulaic and staid. The best Noirs, for me, are the poverty row, low-budget/short-shoot entries, like D.O.A. and The Hitch-Hiker, shot on location, with great character actors, no 'Big Star Names'. When the puffed-up auteurs gave it a go, the results were too slick, glamourous and safe. Gilda is another case in point, though it saved by Rita's amazing sexiness and D.O.A. director Rudolph Maté's gorgeous lighting. But, for me, the best Noirs are the ones devoid of sentimentality, melodrama, romance, morality, above average budgets and Star Egos. The low-budget, shot-on-location, nighttime-heavy, darker-than-dark, existential entries are retain their most of their power. Allen Baron's Blast of Silence (1961) is the best example of this, though it is arbitrarily vetoed as a Film Noir, due to it being made after Welles' extraordinary Touch of Evil (1958).

Seen as a detective melodrama, The Big Heat is good, but is far from being an archetypal Film Noir.


"We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people." - Arthur Schopenhauer

a610guy,

If you get to read this - and not wanting to sound like a know-it-all - I assume you are aware that the line "We are sisters under the mink" is a take on a Rudyard Kipling's line, right? I'm quoting from memory, but the line is something like "Rosie O'Grady and the Colonel's lady/are sisters under their skin." If you knew this, my apologies.