The Big Combo (1955)

The Big Combo is a 1955 film noir released by Allied Artists. Allied Artists was the successor company to Monogram and they specialised in B+ pictures - movies budgeted midway between B-pictures and A-pictures, with better production values than the typical B-movie.

The Big Combo is certainly a lot more visually impressive than most B-features. That’s party due to having an imaginative director in the person of Joseph H. Lewis (who had made one of the greatest B-movies of all time, Gun Crazy, a few years earlier). But mostly it’s due to the work of genius cinematographer John Alton. Alton took the noir visual style and took it to a whole different level. No-one has ever understood light the way Alton understood it. The Big Combo’s claims to being a major entry in the noir canon rest as much on Alton’s contribution as on Lewis’s.

This is an obsessive cop story. The obsessive cop in this case is Lieutenant Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde). He is consumed by his desire to nail big-time gangster Mr Brown (Richard Conte). His obsession has already landed him in trouble with the Police Department but he won’t let up.

What makes things more interesting (and more noirish) is that Diamond isn’t just a dedicated cop. He has a personal grudge against Mr Brown. That grudge is connected with Brown’s girlfriend Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace). Diamond is in love with Susan.

Susan takes too many pills one night and ends up in hospital. She is heard muttering the word Alicia. Diamond is convinced that that word is the key to breaking Brown. Diamond has no idea what the word’s significance might be, but his gut instincts tell him that it means more to Brown than it does to Susan, and that it represents something he has never been able to find - a weakness in Brown’s armour.

Finding out what the name signifies will be a formidable task. Diamond has nothing to go on. But he is a man obsessed and eventually he discovers something. Maybe it’s that key he’s been looking for.

Brown of course is taking action to cover his tracks, and the body count slowly rises.

There’s plenty of conflict between loyalty and betrayal in this movie. Diamond is going to have to find someone willing to betray Mr Brown. And Mr Brown has to be sure that he has taken watertight precautions to avoid betrayal in his own ranks, betrayal being an occupational hazard to gangsters. Brown knows all about betrayal - about being betrayed and betraying others.

Philip Yordan’s screenplay provides a very solid mystery plot.

This is however a movie that is impressive for its style rather than its substance. And it has a great deal of style. It has plenty of noir atmosphere as well.

It lacks some of the film noir trademarks. There’s no voiceover narration, there are no flashbacks, there is no femme fatale. Susan does not qualify as a true femme fatale. Her actions are not always wholly admirable but she’s in a tight spot and she’s just doing what she needs to do to survive. She has no interest in trying to corrupt or manipulate the hero. She never wanted him to fall for her and she never uses his feelings for her against him. She’s not a straightforward bad girl either. The worst thing she can be accused of is having made a mistake when she fell in love with Mr Brown. One thing that is interesting is the suggestion that her attraction to Brown is mostly sexual, and the very faint suggestion that she gets off on playing the submissive role. The erotic heat between Brown and Susan was rather daring for 1955.

Rita, a burlesque dancer with whom Diamond has had some kind of romantic entanglement, is no femme fatale either.

I’m not quite sure that Diamond is a classic noir protagonist either. His obsessiveness is taken to extremes and he is to some extent twisted up as a result. Perhaps Cornel Wilde just didn’t have the acting chops to show us the extent to which Diamond is in danger of running right off the rails.

Mr Brown is your basic gangster bad guy. He’s bad at the beginning of the story and he stays bad.

This is a movie that looks and feels like full-blooded film noir, in fact there are very few movies that look more noirish than this one, but thematically it’s a straightforward crime thriller albeit a fairly hard-edged one.

Cornel Wilde’s performance is very competent but not very inspired. Richard Conte is in wonderfully chilling form. Brian Donlevy is superb as Brown’s chief lieutenant, Joe McClure, a man who is both weak and ambitious. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman are terrific as Brown’s two chief enforcers. They’re not very bright but they’re dangerous enough.

This is a really fine movie that edges its way into greatness by virtue of John Alton’s stunning cinematography and Lewis’s ability to create memorable visual set-pieces. The Big Combo is highly recommended.