The Big Heat

Send us Fan MailNice little film noir survey you got here --- be a shame if something happened to it… If you’ll indulge us, we’re going to swing for the fences a bit this month and try to tie up three threads in noir. The first is that some gee goes against the mob, usually a cop. But, and second  --- it’s got to be a cop who’s not as straight as an arrow, he (always he) has to have a bend to him --- to be as nihilistic as the mob he knocks up against. Finally, playing havoc with the bad girl, femme fatale character. We saw some of that last month in Raw Deal, in which Claire Trevor evolved from the fatal woman to the good woman, to the sorrowful woman. Some performance. We’ll try to examine another novel noir character flip in this month’s offering and hope it meets with your approval. Be a shame if something happened to your nice little podcast… We have some misgivings about the vehicle for all of this thread tying --- the protagonist is not our favorite actor --- not by a long shot. But the other characters are wonderfully fleshed out, and the director is one of the mainstays of the genre, helping to bring the Expressionism of his youth to full flourish on film in the US during the classic period of noir. It’s 1953’s The Big Heat, from actual big studio Columbia. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comBluesky: @wonderfulpeople.bsky.social