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.