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Rating: Vince Stone accompanies his comic book persona with subtle striped ties and flashy suits. He wears the chain on his belt.
Everything about his appearance, his sullen grimace, his mocking smile, makes it clear that he is a gangster.
He lives in a luxury apartment with Debbie Marsh, his woman whom he caresses and despises depending on his mood; when important guests arrive, he orders her to go to the other room because they have to talk.
If they are just friends, instead, Debbie has to serve the whiskey, which is promptly poured into tall tubular glasses*.
Vince is the violent arm of Mike Lagana, a powerful local boss who lives in a sumptuous villa built with prohibition money. Vince calls him Mike, not Mr. Lagana like everyone else.
When Lagana calls him in the middle of the night, while Vince is playing cards and smoking cigars in the living room with the important names of the city, it's because he has an important matter and he can be trusted. One night, down at the "retreat", a nightclub where everyone knows the hierarchy and squints to imply something, Vince hurts a woman who is betting against him at dice.
The woman screams and runs away to cry at a distant table. Dave Bannion, a former police sergeant, emerges from the shadows to defend the woman, with his aura of morality and legality. Bannion threatens Stone.
Vince apologizes, tosses some money to the woman as compensation, and walks out, leaving Debbie behind. All the patrons, sailors with cigarettes, sleazy men in raincoats and complicit bartenders, seeing Vince leave in a hurry, recognize, by lowering their gaze, his defeat. Vince does not know it yet, but that's where his downward spiral begins.
Premise: surely, I don't need to tell you that Fritz Lang is a great director.
Shot in 1953, "The Big Heat" is part of Fritz Lang's Hollywood period, and it certainly doesn’t pale among his masterpieces, even if it doesn't share his visionary power.
The plot is simple: a police sergeant loses his wife in an attempt meant for him after he tries to delve too deeply into a story of corruption; thus begins his personal battle.
According to some, the most famous and beautiful of the American period, but personally, it's second in beauty to "While the City Sleeps".
Exploiting the script of the namesake novel by William P. McGivern, it manages to move within the rules of noir without being limited by them, proposing his pessimistic vision through the catabasis of Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford).
The film might (I emphasize might, it's just my personal interpretation) be summarized in three macro sequences.
In the first, we are presented with Dave's world, an individual well-integrated into society (and here there's a departure from the classic noir outsider) that believes in the system.
The second begins when Dave, on his own initiative, investigates the attack on his wife. He has lost faith in the institutions, which he judges all corrupt and compromised. An example here might be his superior who, at one of his remonstrances, bursts out fearfully "If he comes down on me from above".
In the second part, Dave's descent into the city's underworld begins, his ethics as a good citizen, and into human pettiness, which even comes with the attitude of a mechanic who, out of fear of being killed, won't say what he knows.
Here, the themes dear to Lang and central in this action noir are shown: duplicity, human ambiguity (emblematic in Debbie's half-scarred face), the frailty of social and human values and a bottomless pessimism. And finally, the classic of German Romanticism à la Sturm und Drang (but also of noir) the titanism of a man, a lone man, against a world that is hostile to him.
The third and final part begins with Debbie fleeing to Dave's room after being scarred with boiling coffee by Vince.
At this point, there's a reversal of two roles: that of Debbie who becomes aware of her position ("it's hard to spend the days thinking that one has never thought before") and stops being a femme fatale. The other reversal is Dave's, who once the matter is resolved, will reintegrate into society and return to work at the precinct.
But this is my vision.
To appreciate it, the pleasant conciseness is enough, just ninety minutes, because Lang's expert hand does not allow for useless digressions.
Worth noting, for example, is the incredible modernity shown in the domestic scenes between Dave and his Wife.
Nothing, nothing to do with the creeping machismo and female subordination, in society and in the family, of many contemporary films. His wife drinks whiskey from his own glass and makes veiled allusions about their sex life.
Dave: "We drink the same whiskey, smoke the same cigarettes and steal each other's beer, ours is a truly successful marriage"
Wife: "But not only for this"
Not to mention the jabs at the political class: "Congratulations, you should be a politician. You talk a lot and say nothing" says Dave to a sleazy bartender.
Or still the heartfelt performances of Gloria Grahame (Debbie), Glenn Ford (Dave) or Lee Marvin (Vince Stone, second film in which he appears).
Once again, Lang spares no one, a crushing guilt lies on everyone's shoulders, as highlighted it turns out caustic on many fronts.
From the very first shot: that heavy-looking gun, which summarizes its guilt before even coming into action.
Let's add beautiful dialogues, so precise they seem cut with scissors, which manage to say everything necessary without being wordy, or didactic, and without offending the very sensitive censorship.
Measured, sharp, unconventional, violent and nihilistic; terribly modern. A film of manners, but free of virtuosity, that must be seen.
*in the fifties everyone, absolutely everyone, drinks Whiskey.
-I've been verbose and wordy, I realize it. But I couldn't resist. As soon as I saw that this masterpiece by Fritz Lang was missing in DeB.'s engine, I immediately felt greedy like a mouse in cheese.
I started to wrinkle my nose and smooth my mustache, thinking about the possibility of talking about it.
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