The Big Combo (1955)

Film: The Big Combo (1955)

Stars: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Helen Walker

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

We've revamped the below list of film noirs to include not just marathon entries, but also other films we've reviewed on the blog that fit this description (if you find any more on the blog that aren't listed, let me know in the comments!).  The reason I did this is both because I'm a completist AND because it illustrates how different noir was treated in the 1940's vs. the 1950's.  While in the 1940's it was a major get, with movies like Laura, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, and Leave Her to Heaven featuring the biggest stars on the lot, winning Oscar nominations & making millions, by the mid-1950's the genre was still pumping out titles, but it had fallen on hard times.  The films of this era were not starring the big stars, but instead faded ones or B-movie stars while the biggest names were in Technicolor extravaganzas and musicals.  Stripped of their budgets, the lasting titles of this era were reliant upon pure talent to make that work (if they worked).  I was curious given the lack of major names (other than Cornel Wilde, and he's hardly a bright light star) if this was going to be the case for The Big Combo, generally considered to be one of the best film noir movies of this era.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two men: Lt. Leonard Diamond (Wilde) and Mr. Brown (Conte), the former a hardboiled police detective and the latter a crime boss.  The two men are squaring off partially due to a woman, the suicidal Susan (Wallace), who is dating Mr. Brown but Diamond is falling in love with her (and she might reciprocate).  Diamond is investigating the disappearance of a woman named Alicia (Walker) who we soon learn is Diamond's estranged wife, initially assumed to be dead but soon we find out she's a recluse and a bit emotionally damaged.  The two men square off repeatedly, with both sides (Diamond's friend-with-benefit Rita, several of Brown's associates) ending up dead in the process.

The film ends with a standoff between Diamond & Brown, where Brown is upended by his girlfriend Susan as she flashes a headlight into his eyes repeatedly, meaning he can't see the bullets he's shooting and his gun runs out.  This leads to what is the most famous clip in The Big Combo-a gorgeous shot of Diamond & Susan standing near each other in the fog, just their perfect, shadowy silhouettes taking up the screen (I had to pick it for the photo of this article even though it's literally the final scene in the movie).  I learned afterward that this is what the movie was known for, and while the entire picture has solid cinematography, this was truly something special to the point where I actually paused it and texted a friend of mine "what a sexy shot."  It's instantly iconic, and totally encapsulates the genre.

The movie never approaches the magnificence of this final scene.  It doesn't help that Wilde isn't a magnetic actor, certainly not compared to Richard Conte (whom you all know as Don Barzini in The Godfather) even if the former is the Oscar nominee.  Conte's so magnetic while Wilde is devoid of personality (in what is an interesting part, given that Diamond is kind of a lech, totally manipulating Susan into being with him) that it throws the film off, and there's not enough of Helen Walker (so superb in Nightmare Alley a few years earlier) to make up for it.  Walker would never make another movie, and so it'd be better if her part (the best part in the movie) had been given more time to breath.  But I'm still going three stars as this is a great bare bones noir when it's working, and that final scene is appropriately epic.

Previous Film Noir on The Many Rantings of John: 

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia,The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Nightcrawler