The Big Heat

Saw The Big Heat, a classic noir film that starts off in grand style: a closeup of a gun, a hand grabs it and the hand's owner shoots himself in the head.  His widow shows up and, before calling the cops, calls some gentleman in bed in his mansion.  This kicks off the rollercoaster of events in this brief, taught film.

There film revolves around none of these people in the intro scenes, but around an honest cop who is trying to get to the bottom of this, in spite of corruption at the highest levels.  His happy domestic life is contrasted with the various politicians and gangsters' lives of excess and nightclubs.  Indeed, as the case progresses, it begins to interfere quite heavily in his happy domestic life, causing him to symbolically topple his daughter's toy castle.

There's a lot of strange, unused business around parenthood in this film.  The head gangster has a gigantic painting of his saintly mother over his mantlepiece and a shady bartender at one point claims he was merely calling his mother.  When the squeeze is on, the main character's daughter is sent to hunker with (you guessed it) his parents.  It's not reflected in the plot of the film, but I believe is meant to further contrast the gangsters' corruption (painted facsimile of a mother, using the mother as a cover) against the main character's genuine domestic harmony and (attempted) separation of work and life.  I'm reminded of the film White Heat, where Cagney's gangster character is coded as deviant by his being something of a mama's boy.  At any rate, parents come up a lot here.

Outside of that, I enjoyed the femme fatale who was originally supposed to be Marilyn Monroe but who they swapped out for another actress.  The other actress had the Monroe beautiful mess thing down pat however and seems to be the template upon which Harley Quin and other such bubbly gangster-chicks are based - a sort of manic magical pixie femme fatale.  She's always a delight to watch as she flirts with dangerous men.

The film was alright.  It was very taught and kept humming along, but it contained few surprises. It does contain an awful lot of violence for a Haye's code era film and there's a fair amount of cop corruption (although they all have an un-earned, 3rd-act redemption of course.)  Outside of that, it's a well-made, solid, standard noir.  Well done all around.