The Big Heat (1953)

October 14, 1953, release date

Directed by Fritz Lang

Screenplay by Sydney Boehm

Based on the Saturday Evening Post serial and 1953 novel by William P. McGivern

Music by Henry Vars

Edited by Charles Nelson

Cinematography by Charles Lang

Glenn Ford as Detective Sgt. Dave Bannion

Gloria Grahame as Debby Marsh

Lee Marvin as Vince Stone

Jeanette Nolan as Bertha Duncan

Alexander Scourby as Mike Lagana

Jocelyn Brando as Katie Bannion

Adam Williams as Larry Gordon, Vince Stone’s henchman

Kathryn Eames as Marge, Bannion’s sister-in-law

John Crawford as Al, Dave Bannion’s brother-in-law

Linda Bennett as Joyce Bannion, the Bannions’ young daughter

Chris Alcaide as George Rose

Peter Whitney as Tierney

Willis Bouchey as Police Lt. Ted Wilks

Robert Burton as Detective Gus Burke

Howard Wendell as Police Commissioner Higgins

Michael Granger as Hugo (police clerk)

Dorothy Green as Lucy Chapman

Carolyn Jones as Doris, the woman at The Retreat

Dan Seymour as Mr. Atkins

Edith Evanson as Selma Parker, secretary at the auto body garage

John Doucette as Mark Reiner, Al’s army buddy

Robert Forrest as Bill Rutherford, Al’s army buddy

Al Eben as Harry Shoenstein, Al’s army buddy

Harry Lauter as Hank O’Connell, Al’s army buddy

Produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures

The Big Heat: Violence and the Postwar Existential Crisis

The film’s opening is grim: The first shot after the credits shows a gun on a table or a desk. A man’s hand picks it up, and a shot is heard outside the frame. The man, with the gun still in his hand, enters the frame because he is slumping over the desk blotter. Then a shot of a room in a house shows a woman coming down a flight of stairs; she looks only slightly alarmed. She goes to the man slumped on the desk and finds an envelope addressed to the district attorney of Kenport. She opens the envelope, scans the contents, and hides it in her purse. She calls a Mr. Lagana: “I know it’s late. Wake him up. Tell him it’s Tom Duncan’s widow.”

This woman, Bertha Duncan, plans to use the information inside the envelope for blackmail: She now has inside information on the local tough Mike Lagana. The opening sets the tone right away and foreshadows more violence to come. Viewers are introduced to suicide and blackmail, then witness murder, corruption at every level, and violence against women in particular.

But first Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion steps in. He is investigating Tom Duncan’s death because Duncan was a police officer, but he gets word to back off the investigation when Tom’s widow Bertha complains about his intrusions. Bannion explains his frustrations to his wife at home, and both do their best to protect their daughter. The Bannion family is a loyal, loving trio. They live in their own house in a seemingly nice suburban neighborhood. But nothing and no one is safe in a city run by corruption.

(This blog post about The Big Heat contains spoilers.)

World War II may be over, but there’s more fighting to do now on the home front, with the city’s corruption, violence, and intimidation tactics. The Big Heat still shows some lasting effects of the idealism of World War II. For example, Army veteran friends of Dave Bannion’s brother-in-law are protecting Bannion’s daughter after Bannion’s wife is murdered. The war is over, but they are ready to defend Bannion and his daughter, and to protect what they fought for overseas. One of them says that the thugs in town wouldn’t dare to go where he has gone while he served in the army.

• Detective Dave Bannion: “When trouble comes, it’ll be from hoodlums who know their business. I’m afraid they won’t be stopped by amateurs whose hearts happen to be in the right place.”

• Harry Shoenstein: “Do we look like the cast from some Maypole dance? I’ve been places those creeps wouldn’t go unless they rode in a 50-ton tank. I went in on foot—”

Dave Bannion and Debby Marsh could have seen what was happening around them and asked, “Why bother?” But Dave Bannion makes a decision to fight the corruption he sees, and he’s given extra motivation after the murder of his wife. Debby Marsh has time to think after her boyfriend Vince Stone scars her face with scalding hot coffee, and she decides to take action, too. One could say that Bannion, the Army veterans protecting his daughter, and Debby Marsh are the only ones who are holding on to any ideals at all, even though they are willing, or perhaps forced, to resort to violence themselves.

The Big Heat depicts and/or discusses a lot of violence against women:

• Lucy Chapman, who was having an affair with Tom Duncan, is tortured and strangled soon after telling Dave Bannion that the newspaper accounts about Duncan’s death were wrong. The coroner doesn’t find any sexual assault, but he calls Chapman’s murder a psychopathic act because her body is covered in cigarette burns. (She may be a “working girl” or a barfly, but the coroner and Bannion are still concerned about her death and solving her murder.)

• Katie Bannion, Dave Bannion’s wife, is killed in a car bomb blast.

• Vince Stone uses his cigar to burn a woman’s hand at a local bar called The Retreat, which is a retreat only for the local toughs.

• Vince Stone throws hot coffee in Debby Marsh’s face, scarring her.

• Vince Stone eventually shoots and kills Debby Marsh.

Debby Marsh is transformed from a femme fatale to a woman who cares about Dave Bannion’s predicament and is willing to help him. After hearing that all the information Tom Duncan wrote in his suicide note will be made public after Bertha’s death, Debby decides that she has the least to lose and so shoots Bertha Duncan. To protect herself against her abusive boyfriend Vince Stone, Debby retaliates and throws hot coffee in Stone’s face. She takes an active role, resorting to violence to protect herself and Dave Bannion from Stone and others like him.

The ending, with the police officer ready to help Bannion and Bannion sitting again at his desk in the police station, seemed like it was tacked on for decency’s sake. But viewers already saw that decency had prevailed when Bannion comforts Debby Marsh as she dies from her gunshot wound. With all the violence against women portrayed in this movie, I thought that The Big Heat could have ended right then and been an even better movie. It’s still one of my favorites, however, and it’s one of the best examples of postwar existential crisis.

Manhattan Night (2016)

May 20, 2016, release date

Directed by Brian DeCubellis

Screenplay by Brian DeCubellis

Based on the novel Manhattan Nocturne by Colin Harrison

Music by Joel Douek

Edited by Andy Keir

Cinematography by David Tumblety

Adrien Brody as Porter Wren

Yvonne Strahovski as Caroline Crowley

Jennifer Beals as Lisa Wren

Thomas Bair as Tommy Wren

Madison Elizabeth Lagares as Lisa Wren

Campbell Scott as Simon Crowley

Stan Karp as Frank Crowley

Linda Lavin as Norma Segal

Steven Berkoff as Sebastian Hobbs

Kevin Breznahan as Ron

Raul Aranas as Luis

Grace Rundhaug as young Caroline

Kevin Breznahan as Ron

Produced by DeCubellis Films, Untravelled Worlds, Fable House, Nocturne Pictures, Big Indie Pictures

Distributed by Lionsgate Premiere

Manhattan Night is a neo-noir that is very much like the films noir of the 1940s and 1950s. The protagonist is an investigative journalist, not a private detective, but he’s caught in a typical noir dilemma thanks to a woman he cannot resist. Porter Wren meets Caroline Crowley at a party hosted by his employer, Sebastian Hobbs. All three become enmeshed in a mystery that all of them want solved—for very different reasons. Porter’s attraction to Caroline starts the events in motion; his inability to resist delving into the mysterious circumstances of her husband’s death moves the plot along.

After some opening film credits and overhead shots of New York City in the rain, viewers hear a voice-over from Porter Wren:

“I sell mayhem, scandal, murder, and doom. Oh, Jesus, I do. I sell the newborn and the dead. I sell the wretched, magnificent city of New York back to its people. I sell newspapers.”

Wren also describes himself, a print journalist, as “an endangered species.” The overhead shots of New York City in the rain are disorienting. One shot in particular is dizzying as the camera seems to roll over its lens above a skyscraper. Viewers can already sense the unease and the trouble to come.

Later in the film, after Hobbs’s party, where Wren meets Caroline for the first time, he goes home to a house tucked away from the city street. He needs to open three sets of locks and pass through a narrow alley, and viewers hear him again in voice-over:

“When the gate shuts, my work and the city remain on the other side of the wall that surrounds our hidden home. Lisa and I fell in love with this house when we were first married. There’s something about surviving hundreds of years, like a secret. It kept me honest. Anywhere else, the house should be mundane. But in Manhattan, it was a miracle. My family slept inside, safe from the dangers of these dark streets, secluded too from the world of Caroline Crowley and her famous dead husband, who could not enter this sacred place, unless, of course, I brought them home with me.”

If viewers aren’t already convinced that trouble is in store for Wren, his voice-over should dispel all doubt. A film that begins so ominously cannot keep Wren and his family safe forever, no matter how many locks Porter Wren uses to keep the world out. Fate takes him to dangerous places: He cannot deny his attraction to Caroline, and his natural curiosity, so useful in his work, keeps him investigating her husband Simon Crowley’s death. His ability to solve the mystery eventually becomes a matter of personal safety for himself and his family, so he cannot make a clean break even after he realizes his initial mistake in pursuing an affair with Caroline.

(This blog post about Manhattan Night contains spoilers.)

Caroline is a femme fatale, but one with a back story. Caroline tells Porter her story of childhood trauma and abuse at the end of the film. Was this revelation about her past intended to make Caroline sympathetic? It’s clear that she is a victim, both as a child at the hands of her stepfather and as an adult at the hands of her husband. But she uses her appeal to lure Porter Wren into helping her. Wren tells her at one point that he loves her, but I never believed that Caroline returned his affection. She comes across as more sympathetic in her relationship with Sebastian Hobbs, but even that episode was originally intended for personal gain in her marriage.

Viewers and Wren hear Caroline’s story after Porter discovers how her husband Simon died, and Wren and Caroline meet one last time. Porter gives her a copy of Simon’s last video (Simon recorded many, and viewers see several) and threatens to publish it if she contacts his wife again. Earlier in the film, Caroline claimed to have rheumatoid arthritis and consulted Lisa Wren, a surgeon, who knew that Caroline was lying and tells her husband about the incident. Lisa Wren doesn’t accuse her husband directly, but they both understand the significance of the event.

I very much enjoyed Manhattan Night, but I do have some reservations about the story. Here are my questions that were left unanswered after my single viewing of the film on DVD:

1.  How did Caroline escape suspicion with all the blood she must have had on her after Simon’s evisceration?

2.  No one else, including Hobbs’s henchmen, could figure out that the key opened the padlock on the basement door of the building that had been demolished after Caroline had killed Simon and left his body there?

3.  No one else, including the police, was able to trace the mailings of the video copies to Norma Segal?

The film is based on Manhattan Nocturne, by Colin Harrison, and I wonder: Are these questions answered in the book? I guess I’ll have to read it to find out, but I shouldn’t have to, and the film should have provided the answers. I enjoyed Manhattan Night and, in spite of my misgivings about the unresolved plot details, I enjoyed it enough to recommend it.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

May 23, 1950, release date

Directed by John Huston

Screenplay by Ben Maddow and John Huston

Based on The Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett

Cinematography by Harold Rosson

Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley

Louis Calhern as Alonzo D. Emmerich

Jean Hagen as Doll Conovan

James Whitmore as Gus Minissi

Sam Jaffe as “Doc” Erwin Riedenschneider

John McIntire as Police Commissioner Hardy

Marc Lawrence as Cobby

Barry Kelley as Lieutenant Ditrich

Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli

Teresa Celli as Maria Ciavelli, Louis's wife

Marilyn Monroe as Angela Phinlay

William “Wee Willie” Davis as Timmons

Dorothy Tree as May Emmerich, Emmerich’s sickly wife

Brad Dexter as private detective Bob Brannom, Emmerich’s henchman

Helene Stanley as Jeannie

John Maxwell as Dr. Swanson

Frank Cady as the night clerk

Produced by MGM

Black-and-White Cinematography Makes “Blind Accident” Gorgeous

One of the characters in The Asphalt Jungle, Doc Riedenschneider, repeats, using a slightly different phrase, what could be said and has been said about the role of fate in film noir in general: “Blind accident. What can you do against blind accident?” For most film noir characters, the answer is, “Nothing.” The cinematography, by Harold Rosson, is wonderful in The Asphalt Jungle, and it seems to accentuate the twists and turns of fate, blind accident, for all the major characters in the film.

During and after the credits, the camera does a slow pan of cobblestones and pavement; it seems to be almost at ground level. A police car approaches starting on the left-hand side of the screen in the distance and moves slowly along the street, still in the distance. The police chatter on the car radio accentuates the realism of the sequence. And it reminds me of Where the Sidewalk Ends, another great film noir but one that is told from the perspective of the police officer. The rest of the opening sequence in The Asphalt Jungle is even more spectacular on subsequent viewings (I have seen the film at least twice). I could pick out more details: litter, dirty pillars, rubble, an old brick façade, wires criss-crossing the sky. The setting is very gritty and realistic, and it sets the mood for the action to come.

(This blog post about The Asphalt Jungle contains spoilers.)

The Asphalt Jungle doesn’t have a femme fatale, but there are female characters and they are not treated very well in this film. None of the female characters could be considered leads, and they have no power in this film, although they sometimes embody the fate that thwarts the jewel thieves. The Asphalt Jungle is an unusual film noir in this instance. But in almost every other respect it is quite conventional: It is a heist film gone terribly wrong, with some sympathetic characters who can’t catch a break because fate keeps getting in their way.

When Ridenschneider is released from prison, he goes back to doing what he does best: planning a heist. He brings together a group of men—Cobby, Dix, Gus, Ciavelli, and Emmerich—who can perform each task in his plan so that they can work as a team. But there are too many of them with conflicting interests, and there are too many chance occurrences that none of them foresee.

During the heist in jewelry store, Dix looks out the jeweler’s window several times, and each shot could be a painting of a street scene in any Midwest town. He sees people walking along the street as though it were any other night. After the alarms go off, the point of view and the street scenes change. Now it is the viewer who sees police cars moving toward the center of the screen and pedestrians walking in toward the center. The cars, the pedestrians, and the viewer’s eye are moving in on the center of the crime scene—and the bank heist participants are being hemmed in by the law.

Dix is the only one who seems to form close bonds with others in the film. Reidenschneider and Dix become close, even though their heist unravels and they have to go their separate ways. Dix doesn’t even accept a single jewel, and neither does Doll, after Reidenschneider decides to go on the run. Dix is also close to Gus; the viewer sees what their relationship is like in Dix’s visits to Gus’s café at the start of the film. Dix and Doll seem to share some affection, although Dix seems almost oblivious at times about it: His first love is horses. And he dreams of buying back the farm (Hickorywood Farm) that his family lost after his father died.

Dix gets what he wants—in a way. He makes it out of the asphalt jungle and returns to Hickorywood Farm. But fate (blind accident) steps in: His gunshot wound (which he suffered when Emmerich and Brannom try to double-cross Reidenschneider and Dix) is worsening, and he collapses in a farm field. The final shot of the horses around him and Doll running toward the farmhouse in the distance, desperately seeking help, was both pastoral and sad. I could see why Doll fell for Dix, in spite of his occasionally menacing demeanor and his crime spree. I think it was the filmmakers’ intention to create sympathy for these characters; I wanted to see Dix and Doll achieve their dreams, even though I knew the plot couldn’t possibly end that way.