When a corrupt policeman commits suicide, his respectable wife intercepts a confession letter addressed to the district attorney, and with a phone call to the mob boss secures herself unlimited retirement funds. In Lang's dark city, the law's written word has been replaced by a system of unrecorded transactions. It will take the violence of fire to expose the corruption behind the facade. Fire (cigarette burns on the corpse of a witness he refused to believe; flames on the body of his beloved wife, who perishes in an explosion meant for him) transforms naive detective Glenn Ford into a rogue cop driven by vengeance. Fire seals the revolt of a voluptuous blonde (Gloria Grahame, in a riveting performance) who starts thinking outside her mob-doll role after the gangster she lives with throws scalding coffee on her face. The most formidable among Lang's exposés, The Big Heat is also the chronicle of an impossible love affair in the uncertain zone separating the living from the dead.-Domietta Torlasco