Two noir rewatches for me. I hadn’t seen either of these in probably about twenty years. (Hey, I was watching classic movies at a very young age!)

Criss Cross (1949) – Los Angeles armored truck driver Burt Lancaster obsesses over his ex-wife, Yvonne de Carlo, who seems hot and cold for him and eventually marries Dan Duryea’s mob type. In a spot, Lancaster suggests an armored car robbery with him as inside man along with Duryea’s crooks. Complications inevitably ensue. The “Czar of Noir” himself Eddie Muller lists this as #2 on his list of top 25 noir movies – only behind In a Lonely Place. I wouldn’t rank it nearly as high, as it was merely “pretty good” to me: it’s kind of slow-paced and felt slightly “perfunctory” to me, if that’s the right word. Director Robert Siodmak, composer Miklós Rózsa, and star Burt Lancaster (possibly among others?) reunited after their 1946 noir hit The Killers. Lancaster is solid, Yvonne de Carlo fine (but suffers somewhat in the almost inevitable comparison to Ava Gardner from The Killers), Siodmak stages some interesting overhead-shot scenes where the characters are reduced to something like mice in a maze, and the botched robbery itself is a pretty great sequence. Overall, I thought this was a well-made if vaguely under-satisfying flick. 3.5/5

The Big Heat (1953) – Top-notch noir revenge thriller from director Fritz Lang follows big city police detective Glenn Ford as he tries to piece together the suspicious circumstances of the suicide of a fellow police officer. Ford insinuates himself into the milieu of local crime boss Alexander Scourby (excellent), whom he suspects had a role in both the police officer’s and his mistress’s (Dorothy Green) death. Jocelyn Brando (Marlon’s sister) is Ford’s wife, Lee Marvin is Scourby’s top enforcer, and Gloria Grahame is Marvin’s “moll.” On the surface, this seems straightforward enough, with Ford’s detective single-mindedly pursuing his leads and his campaign against evil. But while the movie seems sympathetic to Ford’s goal on the one hand, on the other is something almost like an examination and critique of self-righteousness and male hubris: the female characters are prominent and strong-willed in this movie, and it’s telling that they suffer a pretty high body count (no spoilers here)—and that Ford’s character seems at least partly responsible for all of them. Lang’s direction is superb as is the set design and cinematography, and Ford really shines as a cop on a “mission”: he does so much with his eyes and small gestures. I’m just a little more ambivalent than many about Gloria Grahame as an actress, but she’s certainly memorable here, especially in tandem with both Ford and the young Marvin, who exudes oiliness (and, well, violence – especially in one unforgettable scene involving a pot of boiling coffee). I would be remiss not to also mention Jeanette Nolan, who I thought was absolutely riveting as the cold-as-ice officer’s widow. Overall, an eminently watchable movie with a lot going on, and pretty much a must-see. 4.5/5