The Big Combo (1955) - film review

Police Lieutenant Leonard Diamond is determined to bring the notorious gangster boss Mr Brown to book.  For Diamond, this is no longer work but a personal crusade against evil.  The lieutenant’s dedication to the case is strengthened when he falls for the gangster’s mistress, Susan Lowell.  In an act of foolhardy bravado, Diamond authorises a round up of Brown’s gang members, but has to release them through lack of evidence.  Just when all appears to be lost, Diamond learns about a missing woman named Alicia, who turns out to be Brown’s wife.  Convinced that Brown murdered Alicia, Diamond steps up his investigation, certain that he will soon find the evidence that will incriminate Brown and put him behind bars.  Mr Brown is a resourceful man, however, and is not willing to go down without a fight...

One of the all-time classics in the film noir gangster genre, The Big Combo marked a career highpoint for director Joseph H. Lewis, who had spent most of his career making low budget B-movies, and doing so with considerably more class and ingenuity than most of his contemporaries.  This film, together with Lewis’s other film noir masterpiece Gun Crazy (1949), exemplifies American film noir at its best, stylishly shot in high-contrast black and white, using shadows and silhouettes to create tension and menace, and featuring the familiar assortment of hardboiled cops and hoodlums locked in a fierce orgy of self-destruction.  For all true film aficionados, this is film noir heaven.

The Big Combo is particularly noteworthy for its graphic violence and overt sexuality, both of which came close to making a mockery of Hollywood’s self-imposed production code.  Although mild by today’s standards, there are sequences in this film which would have been considered sadistic at the time of the film’s release – for example, the scene in which the hero, Lieutenant Diamond, is viciously tormented with (wait for it) a hearing aid.  Later, the same seemingly innocuous device provides a truly inspired touch for the film’s most horrific murder scene – horrific not because it is particularly graphic, but because it catapults the spectator into the place of the victim.  The final shoot-out sequence is equally as arresting, one of the most imaginatively lit scenes of any film noir, and one that pays a respectful homage to another great gangster film, Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar (1931).

The film noir thrillers of this era were noted for their subtle erotic tension, but here the animal attraction between males and females is far more explicit.  The sequences in which Cornel Wilde gets up close and personal with femme fatale Jean Wallace (luckily they were husband and wife at the time) have a flagrant sultry sensuality that, again, would have shocked contemporary audiences.  And there is even the suggestion that two of the gun-toting gangsters have been carrying on a gay love affair.  Could such a film really have been made in Hollywood in 1955?

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?