The Big Heat

 Year:   1953

Director:  Fritz Lang

Screenplay:  William P. McGivern, based on the novel The Big Heat by William P. McGivern

Starring:  Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

While investigating the apparent suicide of a police officer, detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Ford) finds himself pitted against a powerful crime syndicate that effectively owns the city including the police department.  When Bannion's wife is killed by a bomb that was intended for him, his pursuit for justice becomes a quest for vengeance.

This is a powerful slice of film noir from legendary director Fritz Lang, who began with such ground-breaking films as Metropolis (1926) and M (1931) before moving to America where he specialised in bleak crime dramas.  Beginning as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post by writer William P. McGivern, who subsequently published the story as a novel and wrote the screenplay for the film, the tale is tense and exciting, with often darkly witty, hard-boiled dialogue.  Beginning as a square jawed heroic tough guy, and devoted family man, Glenn Ford's Dave Bannion devolves into an obsessive antihero increasingly consumed by his desire for vengeance.  Gloria Grahame is impressive as the gangster's moll who becomes consumed with her own quest for vengeance as well as offering salvation of a kind for the tormented Bannion.  Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, doesn't really get to make much of an impression as the devoted wife before she gets blown up.  The film is surprisingly violent for the time, in particular the notorious scene where Lee Marvin throws boiling coffee in Gloria Grahame's face.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat

Point Blank

 Year of Release:  1967

Director:  John Boorman

Screenplay:  Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe Newhouse, based on the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)

Starring:  Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn,   

Running Time:  92 minutes

Genre:  Crime, action, thriller

On Alcatraz Island, three criminals: Walker (Marvin), his best friend Mal Reese (John Vernon) and Walker's wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker) pull off a robbery.  However Walker is shot by Reese and left for dead in a cell, as Reese and Lynne make off with the stolen money.  A year later Walker is back in San Francisco and sets off on a violent quest for revenge and to collect the money that he is owed, pitting him against a powerful criminals syndicate known as "The Organisation".

 

Judged by the basic plot, this film, adapted from the pulp thriller The Hunter by Richard Stark (a pseudonym for author Donald Westlake) may appear to be little more than an average revenge thriller, of the type that we have all seen umpteen times before, but, in the hands of British director John Boorman, it's elevated to a strange type of art.  It makes use of distorted camera angles, strange ellipses and incongruities, an almost steam of consciousness editing style, and even the stripped down, bare bones plot, to make a strangely disorientating experience.  The film opens with Walker (whose first name is never revealed) being shot several time in a prison cell in Alcatraz.  The gunman, Walker's supposed friend Mal Reese runs off with Walker's wife, Lynne, and the loot.  Clues as to what brought them there are revealed in fragmentary flashbacks.  Then the scene shifts to the outside as a badly injured Walker prepares to plunge into the waters of San Francisco Bay, while a voice over (explained to be an announcer on a tourist boat) explains that escape from Alcatraz is impossible.  We next see Walker on said boat, some time later, apparently none the worse for his experience.  I have explained the opening in some detail because there is a theory about the film that Walker died in the opening scene on Alcatraz, and the rest of the film is his dying revenge fantasy.  This is a reasonable reading, as the film follows the inexorable flow of dream logic.  There are odd discrepancies and omissions, characters appear and disappear with no explanation, and the jarringly sudden changes in location, as well as the frequent sudden flashback scenes.  In one scene, Angie Dickinson who plays Chris, Walker's sister in law who helps him in his quest, says "you really did die on Alcatraz", and later she asks him "why don't you just lay down and die?" There is also the sinister Yost (Keenan Wynn) who seems to guide Walker on his quest for his own purposes.  Walker is a man out of time and place.  He doesn't understand the workings of The Organisation, which is now a seemingly respectable corporation doing unexplained criminal activities and work out of a slick, expensive office block (floor eleven for mergers and acquisitions, floor twelve for murders and executions).  The killers work out of the corner office with secretaries.  Walker comes up time and again against the corporate structure.  All he wants is the money that he was owed from the job.  The granite-faced Lee Marvin plays Walker as something like the Terminator in a suit.  Throughout he barely registers any emotion.  He's a man without a past or a future.  There is no sense of satisfaction when he exacts his revenge.  He exists for nothing more than his quest for the money.  This can be enjoyed as a simple straight forward action thriller, and it is full of great action sequences, but it is much more than that.  It's one of the best action films of the 1960s.

Lee Marvin fires Point Blank

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Year of Release:  1962
Director:  John Ford
Screenplay:  James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck, from a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson
Starring:  James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien
Running Time:  123 minutes
Genre:  Western

In the Old West, idealistic lawyer Ransom Stoddart (Stewart) arrives in the remote frontier town of Shinbone.  On the way his stagecoach is held up and Stoddart is brutally beaten by vicious local bandit Liberty Valance (Marvin).  Ransom is determined to bring Valance to justice.  However, the local marshal (Andy Devine) lacks the courage and the skill to tackle Valance and his gang.  The only one willing to stand up to the bandit is tough local cowboy Tom Doniphon (Wayne).  In Doniphon's view, the only way to stop Valance is with a bullet, but Stoddart, who doesn't even carry a gun, is determined to bring Valance in alive and by the book. 

Filmed in crisp black-and-white, this late John Ford directed Western is one of his best, and a classic of the genre.  James Stewart is in good form as the idealistic lawyer who tries to civilise the tough frontier town by opening a school, and trying to teach the townspeople about politics and Government.  John Wayne is well used as the gruff cowboy.  Wayne was not a particularly good actor, but he had a lot of presence, and Ford always managed to get the best out of him.  Vera Miles is very good as Hallie, the cook and waitress who attracts the attention of both Stoddart and Donophin.  She gives the role some real depth and emotion.  Also worthy of note is Lee Marvin as the snarling, savage Liberty Valance.  The film is bookended by sequences set twenty five years later which are effective but unnecessary.  This is a surprisingly dark film, and quite ambiguous towards the end.  It does have slow patches, but it has some real tension, and a lot of humour.  Considering it is a John Wayne Western it is surprisingly progressive, and has a real elegiac feel about the beginning of the end of an era and the beginnings of the modern United States.

Lee Marvin, James Stewart and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance