the big heat (1953)
Lang’s The Big Heat is a knockout punch, and a fiery affront to corruption and moral compromise. Even as the lines blur between acts both heroic and heinous, Ford’s Bannion is all real behind the actions, while the other tough guys onscreen are all talk, self-gratifying and predatory toward the weak while cowering in the face of strength. In The Big Heat, Lang shows us one rare individual out to protect those who need it, surrounded by individuals out to get theirs, and those willing to look the other way. The Big Heat is one of the best representations of the nerve that runs deep under the film noir era, which all of the films in the movement at their core are touching on. An underlying paranoia of men, unquestioning of the status quo, following orders, too frightened of jeopardizing their newfound status, or their pension, to speak up, allowing the murder of innocents by circles of power untouchable by the law. Bannion cuts through this world of moral relativism like a force of nature to set things right. He becomes the dissolving agent, the corrective remedy, never conflicted, never wavering, and with the world closing in and all those around him seemingly compromised. Lang sets the action in motion slowly and methodically, with our hero not necessarily willing to get involved either, believing in the system he represents. Lang here melds the western genre directly into the noir genre by unraveling the picture further into lawlessness and gun play by the finale, for a shootout in the modern world that feels straight out of the old west. For Bannion, who begins with all of the surroundings of 1950’s suburban home life, delving deeper and deeper into the destructive world of the gangsters who run the urban netherworld for themselves.
In all noir, the civilized world hides a dark secret behind the facade of a peace, those who live the low life are the ones who follow the rules, and those who live the high life are the ones who break them, or turn a blind eye in exchange for the payoff. Most do it willingly, or as Bannion finds out when he finally encounters Grahame’s Debby in the third act, many of the beneficiaries don’t notice or care where it comes from. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and believe me, rich is better” she confesses, thinking like most, that she can live rent-free in the lion’s den, thinking she can play with fire and not get burned. By the film’s final moments it’s the scars that she and Bannion have mutually received that drive both of them to take down the outlaws, and set the world right again. Each of their private heavens are torn apart, there is nowhere left to hide. In this way, our vigilante sergeant becomes the sheriff in town bringing the organizing principle of justice into untamed territory, the urban jungle under mob rule. Lang doesn’t waver in any of his scenarios, Bannion is as cutting as a bolt of lightning in most of the scenes and hard boiled as any anti-hero, walking the line of vengeance that almost pushes him too far, the key is in Lang’s ability to make us believe he’ll do it, a desperate man who doesn’t see another way out as he tries to shake the city out of its nightmare, willing to destroy himself in the process. Just when the world seems to be closing in and there’s no one left to aide him, we’re reminded that not everyone has fallen, in a sequence where his brother-in-law’s army vets form a posse to protect his daughter. It mirrors Lang’s previous Scarlet Street as a corrupt world slowly closes in on a seemingly good man trying to make sense of it all, only here, it doesn’t get the best of him. Lang also rightfully calls Bannion’s common fallacy of thinking he’s the “only one” who cares into question, a deranging form of loneliness in a world that ‘doesn’t understand’. Lang also presents us with an antagonist with a civility all his own, Lagana, building a private fortress to keep the corruption of his own life away from himself, from his family, trying to wash away the blood with luxury, using his fortune to buy his own brand of law and order, masking the chaos of what he’s created. When one of Vince’s subordinates responds tactlessly, Lagana snaps. “I don’t like gutter talk”. The key to a Lang picture is his astute psychology, if Bannion is repulsed by the world around him, Lagana is repulsed by himself.
Like any great noir the dialogue crackles, double-talk from the lackeys and razor sharp jabs from Bannion, who melts when he needs to inside the warm world of the home. Lang’s imagery speaks for the picture when the dialogue takes a rest, the scenes of dinners and putting their daughter to bed followed by the empty home, with the lone baby carriage. The balcony of Vince Stone’s high rise, shown only twice as the sounds of the city can be heard all around them, a suitable place for the finale. Each man trying above all else to carve out a place for himself amongst the chaos, an oasis where he can call his own shots in a way that he sees right, whether it’s Bannion, Lagana, Stone, Duncan or any one of Bannion’s superiors in the department. It’s the ones that trust in them most who suffer under their leadership, whether Debby, Katie, Tom or Lucy. Through it all, Lang paints the picture of a corrupting influence that can’t be kept out forever, until someone stamps it out, until someone turns on the big heat and lets it all boil over, come what may. It’s this slow boil that finally rises that works best in the film, and Lang handles it all with ease. Lang is wise to position Bannion as an anachronism, a man who belongs more in the 19th century morality of 1853 rather than the morally gray post-war world of 1953, where it’s not about right and wrong but about being hip to the score and in on the take, trading the right euphemisms and keeping your mouth shut otherwise. By pitting the cowboy against the machine, Lang spins a noir-western that brings the best of both worlds. Double-talk meets straight talk, shades of gray meet stark contrast and the machinations that hide themselves beneath a surface of civility are cracked wide open. Tell that to your mother.
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