The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat

Dave Bannion: Glenn Ford
Debby Marsh: Gloria Grahame
Kate Bannion: Jocelyn Brando
Mike Lagana: Alexander Scourby
Vince Stone: Lee Marvin
Bertha Duncan: Jeanette Nolan
Larry Gordon: Adam Williams
Tierney: Peter Whitney
Lt. Ted Wilks: Willis Bouchey
Commissioner Higgins: Howard Wendell
George Rose: Chris Alcaide
Lucy Chapman: Dorothy Green
Atkins: Dan Seymour
Selma Parker: Edith Evanson

Director: Fritz Lang
Screenplay: Sydney Boehm
Based on a novel by William P. McGivern
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Art direction: Robert Peterson
Film editing: Charles Nelson
Music: Henry Vars

So many of the roles in Glenn Ford's career established him as a figure of middle-American blandness that it comes as a surprise to see the cold-eyed intensity of which he was capable in the role of the vengeful Dave Bannion in The Big Heat. He's still the good guy, fighting crime bosses and corrupt cops, but with the film noir twist that he's willing to resort to some pretty bad means to achieve his ends. He's also a solid foil for Gloria Grahame at her sultriest and a tough foe for Lee Marvin at his thuggiest. We get a glimpse of the more familiar Ford in the scenes with Bannion and his wife and daughter that verge a bit on stickiness, though the more to emphasize Bannion's quest for vengeance after his wife is killed and his daughter threatened by Alexander Scourby's suave mobster, Mike Lagana. (Is it just my prurient imagination, or does the scene in which Lagana is wakened for a phone call by George, his bodyguard, wearing a bathrobe, suggest that George may be doing more to Lagana's body than just guarding it?) The Big Heat is a classic, one of the highlights of Fritz Lang's American career, and it still has the power not only to startle and shock but also to amuse, thanks to a solid screenplay -- Grahame in particular is given some delicious lines to speak, including Debby's classic riposte to Bertha Duncan, "We're sisters under the mink."

Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948)

Welles may have taken the old theatrical superstition of referring to the play not by its title but as "the Scottish play" a little too seriously. The decision to have actors deliver Shakespeare's lines with a Scottish accent was met with derision by critics, and Republic Pictures, the poverty-row studio that released the film, eventually had it redubbed without the accents after the initial release flopped. The original soundtrack has been restored, however, and it's hard to see what set the critics' teeth on edge: For the most part, the occasional flavoring of the dialogue with Scottish vowel sounds and diphthongs is unobtrusive. The one exception, to my ear, is Roddy McDowall as Malcolm, who carries the accent a bit too far -- though that may be because McDowall's conception of the character is something of a callow noodge, especially in the scene in which he's trying to persuade Macduff (Dan O'Herlihy) to cease grieving for his murdered family and take action. I must have seen the old redubbed and cut version at one point, because I remember the film as rather glum and murky, when in fact, although it's not wholly successful, it's filled with Wellesian visual touches and some very solid performances. Welles makes remarkable use of the celtic cross as a visual motif, for example, having the troops advancing on Dunsinane carry impossibly long staffs surmounted with the cross, a touch that dazzles the eye. His own performance is somewhat uneven -- Welles was seldom the strongest actor in his productions -- and he fails to provide Macbeth with the character arc that makes the character a tragic figure, moving from mere ambition to blind bloodthirstiness. Jeanette Nolan is a good Lady Macbeth and O'Herlihy a suitably strong adversary for Macbeth. As usual, Welles drew many performers from his Mercury Theater company, including Erskine Sanford as a dignified Duncan, something of an about-face from his broadly comic performance as the flustered newspaper editor Herbert Carter, huffing and puffing when he's ousted by the paper's new owner, Charles Foster Kane, in Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941). The low budget for the film shows, especially in the sets -- Dunsinane seems to be more cave than castle, its walls made out of Plasticine -- cobbled together on the Republic soundstage by art director Fred A. Ritter. And although Welles's keen eye served him well, as Alfred Hitchcock's would later when he shot Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), John L. Russell was never a distinguished cinematographer. Still, this is a fairly distinguished effort at putting Shakespeare on film.