Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...
- 12/15/2015
- by Duncan Gray
- MUBI
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...
- 12/15/2015
- by Duncan Gray
- MUBI
The Big Heat
Written by Sydney Boehm
Directed by Fritz Lang
USA, 1953
Opening with a bang, Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat begins with a carefully placed overhead shot of a hand claiming a small pistol resting atop a fine desk. An off-screen gun shot erupts in the soundtrack, followed by the body of a man crumpling onto the desk, lifeless. His wife (Jeanette Nolan), stunned by the event, notices an envelope on the table addressed to the district attorney, which she chooses to hide after reading its contents. It turns out the man who committed suicide was a Tom Duncan, a cop. Det. Dave Bannion (Glen Ford) is commissioned with investigating the reasons behind his former colleague’s death wish. Perplexed as to the circumstances behind the suicide, information comes to light that may suggest foul play, especially when an informant (Dorothy Green) turns up dead the next morning.
Written by Sydney Boehm
Directed by Fritz Lang
USA, 1953
Opening with a bang, Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat begins with a carefully placed overhead shot of a hand claiming a small pistol resting atop a fine desk. An off-screen gun shot erupts in the soundtrack, followed by the body of a man crumpling onto the desk, lifeless. His wife (Jeanette Nolan), stunned by the event, notices an envelope on the table addressed to the district attorney, which she chooses to hide after reading its contents. It turns out the man who committed suicide was a Tom Duncan, a cop. Det. Dave Bannion (Glen Ford) is commissioned with investigating the reasons behind his former colleague’s death wish. Perplexed as to the circumstances behind the suicide, information comes to light that may suggest foul play, especially when an informant (Dorothy Green) turns up dead the next morning.
- 1/17/2014
- by Edgar Chaput
- SoundOnSight
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