摘要：The Big Heat (1953) opens with a close-up of a .38 revolver lying on a table. Subsequent shots will link the weapon with the suicide of a corrupt policeman, but in this first appearance its isolated prominence in the frame provides early commentary on the violence endemic in a troubled and dangerous society. The film opens up familiar Lang territory: the perverse and violent male-dominated world of complicit sinners and saints (from crime barons to law en-forcers) threatened by the disruptive presence of unruly women, here epitomised by Debbie (Gloria Grahame), the uncontrollable and irreverent mistress of the brutal hitman Vince (Lee Marvin). There is an almost Sadean ambience (already noted by Colin McArthur in Underworld USA) of a Nature at war with itself, of human beings exemplifying in their relationships with one another the cruelties of a ma-levolent world
