MovieChat Forums > The Big Heat (1953) Discussion > I wish i watched this 10 years ago

I wish i watched this 10 years ago

posted 16 years ago by AdamTheTurk
15 replies | jump to latest

I just recently watched this, and i really didn't like it that much,

unfortunately it seemed a too cheesy and amateurish, but knowing that this came out during the Hays code so they couldn't get away woth much i can sorta tell why they didn't put a lot of violence in it.

To me the acting was not that great (with the exception of Lee Marvin and Glen Ford) in fact sometimes it was laughable.

now i think if i had watched this 10 years ago it would have been a better view because nowadays the actings better and the production of a movie is better, And there is more violence is movies nowadays. but if it was in the mid-nineties i think i could have enjoyed it more because i wouldn't have been disensatized by the movies that get put out these days.

[–] parisel 16 years ago

"nowadays the acting is better"

There is simply nothing to say to someone who would make that comment. Sorry there wasn't enough violence for you.

I guess it's like looking at clouds. You see one thing and I see another. Peace.

[–] AdamTheTurk 16 years ago

naa its not that there wasn't enough violence, its just that compared to nowadays, its just seemed a bit lame. considering it was a gangster movie.

[–] ThomasMuf 16 years ago

You must be the biggest poop ever. No knowledge about film making, the poorest taste imaginable (violence is good, nothing else matters), and on top of that you're a creep. Just go away please, will ya'

[–] hisgrandmogulhighness 16 years ago

. . . the Big Heat, Lang's masterwork, is not a gangster movie . . .

[–] Flabrezu 15 years ago

This isn't a goddamn gangster movie.

[–] flanger216 16 years ago

"nowadays the actings better and the production of a movie is better"

Bwahahahaha! Mind boggling.

[–] stephenbeeston-1 16 years ago

Lang purposely didn't put any violence in because in his words:

"It forces the audience to imagine it in the worst way"

In fact, Lang hated violence on screen purely for spectacle.

This is a great, moving, piece of work, not only about "gangsters" but about the larger social context, and the diminishing perception of familial life after WWII.

And calling Lang "amateurish" - you obviously have no idea as to how much Lang has influenced contemporary cinema, and the fact that he is considered one of the greatest directors of all time.

You obviously don't appreciate movies apart from pure self-indulgent entertainment purposes. Films are an art, not merely an entertainment.

[–] mediocredave 16 years ago

Seriously, dude, two people get boiling coffee thrown over their faces. That's pretty violent.

[–] marvel88 16 years ago

You probably wish Lang would have shown the murder of the children in "M" as well...

"I know you're in there, Fagerstrom!"-Conan O'Brien

[–] lastmidnite2 16 years ago

If you can't appreciate the performance of the great Gloria Grahame, you're either a backward child or a nit wit.

[–] mdonln 10 years ago

You're right but it wasn't just the coffee to the face. The description of the off-screen murders was violent enough for me. Lucy Chapman was tortured, killed, and dumped on the side of a road. Larry caught a 'couple of slugs and what's left of him was on its way to the bottom of the river'.

Let's not forget there was also pushing and shoving, punches thrown, a cigarette burn to a woman's hand, arm twisting, a near strangulation, a suicide, an on-screen murder, a shootout during which someone was killed, and an explosion that led to another death. In addition, there's all the implied violence the bad guys would have been involved in. If the OP doesn't think this movie is violent enough, he/she really is jaded.

I know it's fashionable and popular to blame the Hays code for a lot of things but I prefer a lot of the movies made under the code to a lot of the stuff made today with all the gratuitous violence and sex but not much by way of a decent plot.

Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

[–] LCella9370 10 years ago

You wouldn't have been desensitized in the nineties? What have you been watching over the past 20 years? Snuff films?

[–] SamoanJoes 10 years ago

I agree. I normally like these noir films, but this one was just comedic at times.

[–] ridge-m-1 10 years ago

Doncha just love it when kids find it necessary to comment on a film noir classic. You never know what type of idiocy they will come up with.

Too bad the tit-for-tat hot coffee scenes did not meet his violence quotient for the day.

The reputations of Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin speak for themselves.

Are Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Carol Reed, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski (neo-noir), Fritz Lang, Jules Dassin, Raoul Walsh, John Huston, Jacques Tourneur, Charles Laughton, Stanley Kubrick, Nicholas Ray, Don Siegel, and Francis Ford Coppola (neo-noir) worse directors than the ones that directed the PG rated crap that fills all 12 screens at your local Cineplex?

What a dope!

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]