The Big Heat

A searing story of an obsessively self-righteous cop’s (Glenn Ford) determination to smash a crime syndicate responsible for his wife’s death. Of Lang’s American films, this brutish noir most successfully combines a “realist” narrative with the more abstract concerns and design of his German films. The relationships between fate, justice, morality, individual guilt and society are traced across the paranoid and dense web-like connections between law enforcement and organised crime. Featuring a memorable young Lee Marvin as a sadistic henchman, it also includes one of Grahame’s most celebrated and sympathetic supporting performances.