BIG HEAT

Fritz Lang's 1953 potboiler still works.

Big Heat isn’t my favorite Fritz Lang film noir. That’s reserved for Ministry of Fear, the WWII noir with Ray Milland. The train scene in that one gets me every time. Cake anyone?

Lang turns to coffee in the Big Heat, the 1953 Glenn Ford rouser with Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin, but if you haven’t seen it, we don’t want to give anything away.

Ford plays the part of a vengeful cop who must overcome a lot of corruption, while Grahame is the bouncy gun moll with too much time on her hands.

Lee Marvin is lean and mean in this one, a nice set-up for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance some nine years later (in between, he did a lot of TV, including a starring role in M-Squad for three years, and appeared in movies like The Caine Mutiny and Bad Day at Black Rock).

Ford is a tough homicide detective who gets caught up in a case that starts with a police official who commits suicide. It unravels pretty fast in Lang’s tale of relentless criminal retribution.

The movie’s worth seeing just for Grahame, now considered one of the premier femme fatales in the noir world. Eddie Muller, host of TCM’s Noir Alley, loves her, hailing her performance (opposite Humphrey Bogart) In a Lonely Place as one of his favorites.

Grahame’s performance in Big Heat is notable not only because she overcomes adversity but because she takes the game over in this one. The scene, early in the film, where she’s mixing a drink and bopping out from behind the bar (see above), captures Grahame at her most provocative.

I caught Big Heat Thursday at the Peoria Women’s Club in Downtown Peoria where there will be another Glenn Ford movie next month (Gilda on August 14 at 6:30 p.m.) That will complete the summer noir trilogy at the club.

Lynette Steger, 1st VP of the club, does a great job hosting the movie nights as well as other events. I thank her for bringing Maggie Nelson and I back together to do the noir series, something we did initially at the club in 2003 (check out my Jan. 24 Substack post for more details).