The Big Heat 4K 1953

In the oeuvre of legendary director Fritz Lang, “The Big Heat” occupies a place of honor, being essentially one of his most famous films and perhaps his highest-grossing. The creator of the classic Metropolis, who fled Nazi-ravaged Germany (leaving behind his wife, who shared Nazi ideas and wrote scripts for him), Lang arrived in Hollywood already a famous and revered master. He did not get lost in his new surroundings, directing a dozen films of various genres, all of them of high quality and abounding in innovative cinematographic and artistic techniques.

Filmed in 1953 based on the novel by renowned detective writer William McGowan, The Big Heat offers viewers a classic story about an incorruptible police officer who single-handedly fights the rotten upper echelons of his own department, which has long since sold out to the mafia. Naturally, the criminals have no intention of tolerating the persistent detective Dave Benion and decide to kill him. But the bomb planted in Dave's car explodes, killing his wife. Consumed by a thirst for revenge, the cop throws away his badge and enters the fray.

In today's world, the plot is just right for a bone-crushing action movie, with the inevitable chases, countless shootouts, and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. Noir, however, suggests a different approach: the inevitable attributes in the form of a girl who has fallen victim to her sadistic suitor and decides to restore justice on her own, thereby helping the main character, the hero himself, who never parts with cheap cigarettes, a hat, and a raincoat, a hypertrophied thug with the face of Lee Marvin (God forbid such a thing at night), the almost complete absence of action during the day, and an ending that only barely qualifies as a “happy ending”...

It must be admitted that The Big Heat is unlikely to have a strong impact on viewers who are saturated with modern action films. There is no pumped-up hero, no hurricane-like shootouts with two-handed firing of all kinds of semi-automatic and automatic weapons, no high-speed chases in brand new Porsches. The film captivates with completely different things—its atmosphere, juicy, polished dialogue, and the magnificent Gloria Graham, whose sexuality radiates despite the fact that she has to walk around with a bandage covering the left half of her face for half the film.