Cinema
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang · 1953
Synopsis
In Kenport, Sergeant Dave Bannion investigates the suicide of a police officer, Tom Duncan. The widow speaks of an illness; Lucy Chapman, the dead man's mistress, says he had no reason to kill himself, and she is found strangled. His superiors order Bannion to close the case; he persists, comes up against the head of the underworld who runs the town, and his wife dies in the explosion of the car bomb meant for him. Suspended, he hands in his badge and carries on alone.
Context
The film adapts William P. McGivern's serial published in the Saturday Evening Post from December 1952 to February 1953, then in book form; Columbia bought the rights during publication. The screenplay is by Sydney Boehm, a former crime reporter. Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Jocelyn Brando play the leading roles. Boehm altered several elements of the original story and notably created the character of the corrupt commissioner Higgins.
Who it is for
A film noir of an hour and a half, whose investigative plot foreshadows the police film of the following decades.
Prizes and reception
Presented in New York on 14 October 1953, it was added in 2011 to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.