The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

73. 1953 - The Big Heat

The Big Heat Glenn Ford
Columbia Pictures

Honourable Mentions: Stalag 17, Tokyo Story, The Wages of Fear

Fritz Lang's association with noir cinema grew exponentially following his emigration from Nazi Germany to the United States, where he went on to direct several classics both during and after the Second World War, including Ministry of Fear, The Woman in the Window, and Scarlet Street.

But Lang's greatest genre contribution wasn't released until 1953 - a film that had real fire in its belly, and starred the shark-like Glenn Ford in the lead: The Big Heat.

A definitive vigilante movie all about a policeman's quest for vengeance against a criminal syndicate, The Big Heat is both pulpy and thoroughly blistering, featuring stunning cinematography, a smooth, affecting turn from Ford, and two formidable performances from Gloria Grahame and an early-in-his-career Lee Marvin.

Of the many indelible contributions Lang made to cinema, The Big Heat may not be the most influential, but it may just be his best.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.