Film review: The Big Heat (1953)

This is a film by Fritz Lang, as in Metropolis, M, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, so it should be amazing, but while it's certainly not bad, it's a little disappointing, especially given its reputation as a classic noir.  Part of the problem is that it stars Glenn Ford, who is not exactly suited to nuance.  Another problem is the script: the basic idea is good and there are some good characters (Lee Marvin in an early role as a very hateable heavy, Gloria Grahame as a moll who breaks good, Jeanette Nolan as an icily evil policeman's widow), and the film is never boring, but somehow it seems a little plodding.  The film starts with a man committing suicide and his wife coming downstairs and finding a very long suicide note.  A sly smile plays about her lips and she calls someone (local political bigwig with a shady past Mike Lagana).  Then we are introduced to our protagonist, Dave Bannion, Homicide.  He's easily convinced that it's a suicide but later encounters a woman in a bar who swears that the man who died, who it turns out was a cop, who "worked in records," was not suicidal and was about to go off with her because he was separating from his wife (who very much played the grieving widow when Bannion interviewed her).  He doesn't believe her, but certainly gets more suspicious when her cigarette-burn-covered corpse is found the next day.  Meanwhile we have been introduced to his bucolic home life, with his pretty young wife (played by Marlon Brando's sister) and toddler daughter.  Cue ominous foreshadowing.  Pretty soon Bannion gets even MORE suspicious because his higher-ups (Lieutenant Wilks and Commissioner Higgins) keep warning him off the case - especially after he goes to Mike Lagana's place, insults him and beats up his bodyguard.  But things really hit the fan when (yes, you guessed it) his wife gets into a car that he was supposed to be using and it blows up.  Pretty soon he has resigned from the force in disgust at their corruption and is on a mission.  It's at this point that he runs into Lee Marvin (who is a hoodlum in cahoots with Lagana) and his moll, Gloria Grahame.  She follows him back to the hotel room he's moved into, intrigued at how he is unintimidated by Marvin.  This proves to be a bad move for her, because Marvin finds out and scalds her face with boiling coffee, disfiguring her.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that the "suicide note" we saw at the beginning detailed all of Lagana's corruptions and the cop committed suicide because he was deep in it and couldn't take it any more and wanted Lagana to go down.  But his wife realized what this was and set up a system whereby the note was hidden, only to be released if she died, so that she could hit Lagana up for as much as she wanted to keep her in fur coats.  Bannion passes this info on to Grahame's character, admitting that he wishes he could kill the wife but can't make himself do it (of course he can't - he's Glenn Ford!).  Well, guess what happens.  Grahame also gets appropriate revenge on Marvin, but it costs her.  Oh, and Wilks and Higgins come around and Bannion gets reinstated, which severely undercuts the noirishness of the whole proceedings.  An odd film on the whole - particularly fatal on female characters (four of them die).  It reminds me a bit of a Hong Kong film in that it intersperses extreme (for the 50s) violence with cloying sentimentality (Bannion's daughter and her fondness for The Three Little Kittens).  But Marvin is, as always, magnetic, and Gloria Grahame steals the film as the apparently vapid moll turned angel of vengeance who gets all the best lines.  You wonder why she's not famous today, especially given the scandal that essentially ended her career.