The Big Combo

The Big Combo begins in the classic noir style, with an opening shot of a helicopter over a cityscape at night; lights flicker and dazzle below as a shrill jazz score overpowers the soundtrack, led by a jazz trumpet. As John Alton’s classic camerawork gently descends to earth, we cut to a frantic boxing match and then to an industrial alleyway, where a shadowy man holds a cigarette, smoke surrounding his face and chest. A silhouetted blonde approaches, while another man looks the other way. Two men appear upon the scene as the blonde woman emerges from the shadows. The blonde frantically begins to run as the other men pursue her, adrenaline pumping, shadows surrounding her as she flees. The pursuers, Lee Van Cleef (Fante) and Earl Holliman (Mingo), catch up as she pleads, “Please let me go!” The two men tell her Mr. Brown wants her back at the fights.

We cut to a police precinct office, where Captain Peterson (Robert Middleton) criticizes his lieutenant, Detective Lt. Diamond (Cornel Wilde), for wasting taxpayer money by spending all his time investigating a lone man, Mr. Brown, for years and getting nowhere. Diamond responds that this is an organization, not a man. Instead of investigating the Teflon king, Diamond has been investigating his girl, Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), to get at Mr. Brown, but six months of shadowing her has led to nothing. Four years of tracing Mr. Brown have led to nothing. Peterson advises Diamond, as a friend, to move on.

As we can see, film noir is typically composed of chiseled types, and these types get to develop a detailed character, an inner being that cuts deeply if the film is to rise above the mundane. For instance. The character of Susan Lowell, the gangster’s moll. Let us demonstrate. Defying Mr. Brown's request to return to the race track, she comments to Fante and Mingo that she is hungry and suggests they take her out for a meal. Fante protests, but Mingo says Mr. Brown said to keep her happy. So, they go to the restaurant.

Susan seems distracted and unwell, eating steak and wondering whether she should continue her relationship with Mr. Brown. The expression on her face says it all. Suddenly, Susan recognizes an elderly face from a long time ago, Mr. Audubon (Roy Gordon). She immediately brightens up and rushes to him. He immediately notices how different she looks, but she smiles and says she's the same girl she was years ago. The elderly gentleman mentions a concert, and Susan tells him she no longer plays piano. Susan momentarily looks ill but recovers just enough to ask for a dance. With Audubon, she appears vibrant and energetic. Her innocent past life is still alive, but this is only a façade. But only after a moment of blissful dancing, her eyes turn up, and she faints, saying, “I think I am dying.” Unknown to anyone, she has taken pills to kill herself. But metaphorically, she is dying from this new criminal life of the last four years, but she faints, reminding herself of the past that could have bloomed into something beautiful. Director Joseph Lewis has crafted a typically stereotypical role into something fresh with depth.

The above but never-seen Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) is finally viewed in the dressing room of his prizefighter after the match. “… lost, I feel terrible, Mr. Brown,” Bennie, the boxer, states. The smiling Mr. Brown tells Bennie (Steve Mitchell), “Okay, so you lost, next time you’ll win. I’ll show you how. Take a look at Joe McClure ( Brian Donlevy) here. He used to be my boss; now I’m his. What’s the difference between me and him? We breathe the same air and sleep in the same hotel. He used to own it. We eat the same steaks and drink the same bourbon … there is only one difference … hate! Hate is the word, Bennie. Hate the man who tried to beat you. Kill ’em, Bennie, kill ’em. Hate him until you see big money. The girls will be tumbling after. You’ll have to shut off your phone to get a night’s rest.” Brown tells his fighter to stand up and slaps him hard in the face, but Bennie takes it. “What are you doing that for, Mr. Brown? “You should have hit me back; you haven’t got the hate.” Taking to Joe McClure, Brown snaps, “Tear up Bennie’s contract; he’s no good to me anymore!”

Later in the film, the character of Mr. Brown develops further during a conversation with Diamond at the Dreyer Antiques Shop. Diamond, looking forlorn, utters, “I’ll wait until I can put you on trial for murder.” Brown, speaking to Diamond, facing away from him and constantly smiling/smirking, replies, “You like to be me … you like to have my organization, my influence, my fix. You can’t, it’s impossible. You think it’s money, but it’s not. It’s personality. You haven’t got it; you’re a cop! Slow, steady, intelligent … with a bad temper, a gun under your arm, and a big yen for a girl he can’t have. First is, and second is nobody.” Diamond exits with utter disdain while Brown slowly turns around in his swivel chair.

In another scene, which helps explain Mr. Brown's character, Susan is talking to Brown at her house in a secret accounting room, having just learned that Alicia was Brown’s wife. Susan asks him why he left his wife. He angrily declares that he doesn't want to discuss it. Finally, grabbing Susan, he says, “All right. I’ll tell you about it. I was in love with her. I, a prison guard, had to work my way up. All I had was guts. I traded that for money and influence. I got respect from everybody but her. She did everything she could to humiliate me. She was always drunk, flirting with men. I tried to straighten her out. I took her on a boat trip to Italy. The day after the boat docked, she disappeared. I spent months looking for her. Where do you think she was? She lived in Grazzi’s [the former head crime boss's] house; he was bigger than me. Now you know who Alicia is.

Screenwriter Philip Yordan and director Joseph Lewis have crafted a lower-budgeted film noir that rises above. The dialogue is fast and snappy, and the characters are well-defined, something generally not typical for a “B” film. The way Mr. Brown gloats about using hatred as the ultimate power, making himself the boss when he was formerly the employee. Coldly dumping Bennie by tearing up his contract after losing a fight is cold and cruel, showing no compassion. But what is essential is the depth of character development generated.

After making 96 false arrests and admitting Mr. Brown to a lie detector test, the harassed Captain Peterson tells Diamond the Brown case is closed, no more pitting

Brown against “the righteous” Lt. Diamond, as Brown likes to call him. Exact opposites. The righteous Diamond, a pit bull investigator, is fighting the good cause against the amoral Mr. Brown, who uses hate as a weapon and wealth as superiority. Diamond asks, “What can you lose, $96.50 a week,” vowing to partner Sam Hill (Jay Adler) that the investigation will continue.

Enter Rita (Helene Stanton), current Burlesque dive dancer and apparent former flame of Lt. Diamond. At first, acting bored and uninterested, she soon warms up considerably. Diamond asks her out to dance, and she responds that she’s been dancing at her job and hasn’t heard from him in six months. “If you want a date, do what others do; call me first … a week in advance!” Diamond cozies up to her and invites Rita to a party at his house tonight. “Lieutenant, either book me or let go of my arm.” Diamond walks away smirking, but Rita yells, “Leonard, Leonard,” and then kisses him, smiles, and says, “Take me to the party.” At his deserted home, Rita and Diamond kiss, and then he calls her stupid for dating a cop, to which she responds, “You can’t say anything nice without spoiling it.” He responds, “How can you waste your time with a cop?” Rita admits to being attracted to hoodlums and detectives.

Brown returns home to find Susan with a drink (he disapproves), playing classical piano music loudly (he demands she turn it off), and not wearing white (he insists she wear white). In a brief sequence, we can see the couple’s abusive relationship. Brown barks some orders at her, and Rita responds to the music, “I enjoy it.” Reacting to her outfit, Brown demands, “You have a dozen white dresses; why don't you wear one?” Rita responds with a smirk, “White doesn’t please me anymore.” Now aggravated and flustered, Brown says, “A woman dresses for a man, so go find something white.” The grimacing Rita responds that she won’t. Rita admits to Brown that she was trying to remember how they fell in love (as if it were a distant memory). Brown then inquires about Diamond and what he said, and she only answers that he wanted to know about someone named Alicia.

Meanwhile, Rita calls Diamond to her backstage dressing room at the club to tell him there’s a price on his head and that he better take a vacation, to which Diamond says. “It’s what I’ve been doing, but only more.” Rita, now visibly upset, reacts as if he is trying to get himself killed. “Brown doesn’t kill to get what he wants; he buys,” Diamond utters. ”Then you better sell out and start running,” Rita casually says. Rita has to rush off to do her dancing number.

As Diamond exits the Burlesque club in dense fog, closes the door behind him, and walks down the stairs, he is sucker-punched with an arm emerging from the right side of the screen. An amplified punch explodes on the soundtrack. Diamond falls backward on a step as a man attacks the cop. Diamond shoots the other man, Mingo, in the arm, writhing in pain. But the duo overpowers Diamond and takes him away.

These moody fog scenes in the club's rear remind us of John Alton's talent, perhaps the leading cinematographer of film noir, or at least one of the top five. The film begins with a stunning cityscape, with lights popping on after dark. We have that night-lit chase scene with shadows.

And light-dark contrast everywhere. We have the foggy alley sequence with a cigarette-smoking man, smoke filling his face. Again, we have the smoky rear of a Burlesque club and arms thrusting out of the shadows. Between T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked by Night, Border Incident, Mystery Street, I, the Jury, and Witness to Murder, Alton demonstrated his mesmerizing film noir camera work and shone in non-noir cinema. However, when it came to film noir, John Alton never graduated from the lower-budget noirs with a mainstream push or the more prominent budgeted films. He mainly made his mark in noir with independent cinema and “B” studio noirs. However, maintaining independence allowed him to create classic noir sequences that, when captured on film, show just what classic film noir was. His most excellent sequences perfectly capture the world of noir.

The amount of on-screen violence separates the 1950s film noir from the 1940s. After Diamond is kidnapped and tied to a chair, Joe McClure pays Fante and Mingo a hundred dollars each to allow him to beat one answer out of Diamond. Joe slaps the unconscious cop hard twice, and when Mr. Brown enters, Joe says he was softening Diamond up for him. Brown criticizes Joe’s lack of style as he orders Fante to turn the radio to high volume and remove a hearing aid from Joe’s ear. Brown sticks the hearing aid in Diamond’s ear and shouts into the microphone, awakening the cop. Brown continues to yell into the mic as Diamond squirms and squints his eyes, obviously in great pain. “You like crazy drums, lieutenant?” as he holds the microphone up to the wailing radio, causing excruciating pain until he falls into unconsciousness. Taking the earphones out of Diamond’s ear, he asks his boys for any liquor. Only finding hair tonic, Brown says to force some down his throat as the detective gurgles and coughs. Mingo and Fante drop off the drunk policeman at Officer Peterson’s apartment, obviously staggering and drunk. Films like The Big Combo introduced violent antics like this.

One new clue, Bettini, the right-hand man to the Grassi, the old crime boss before Brown, and a man who might know Alicia, and how she is involved. But Bettini is living scared, afraid Brown will assassinate him at any moment. When Diamond enters Bettini’s apartment, Bettini lies down on the couch, ready to quietly accept a kill shot, until Diamond reveals he’s a cop. “If you help me, I can put your nightmare away.” Bettini reveals that Alicia was Brown’s wife, “She was a good girl” until she slowly became a lush. So, of course, Brown got rid of her on a boat. The skipper bought a new anchor on the way home, insinuating that her body was anchored to the bottom of the sea.

Diamond takes Bettini into custody for his protection. The former skipper is now a renowned antique dealer, Nils Dreyer (John Hoyt), who says, “Mr. Brown is a fine gentleman” and refers to himself as a “stupid Swede” who knows nothing. He refuses the offer of information for protection. As the telephone rings and disconnects when answered, Dreyer is shot the moment he steps outside his door. Mr. Brown is distraught over the killing. “Why did you do it, Joe? I'm trying to run a business impersonally. Killing is very personal. Once it gets started, it's hard to stop. I could understand it if you were a trigger-happy punk, but you're not. You’re an experienced man, Joe … you’re just getting too old. You don’t like me too much, Joe. You should have taken over instead of me. Please give me your gun, Joe. [The music crescendos]. Joe takes the gun from his coat, momentarily aiming it at Brown. Brown accuses him of being “a little man” who cannot take down a big man. He tells Joe to walk away. Brown’s concept of being the bigger man is essential to his self-identity.

Brown, growing frustrated, orders Mingo and Fante to burst into Rita’s apartment and machine-gun Diamond. Instead, they murder the innocent Rita. This outrages Diamond, who wants to end this case quickly. He feels guilty that he used her, pushing Sam against the wall and breaking down in tears. Sam, though abused, comforts Diamond.

He concludes from a series of photos and discovers via Susan that Alicia is still alive. Bettini was mistaken about who was murdered on the boat; it was Grazzi whom Brown had killed. Diamond arranges to see Alicia (Helen Walker) at her old-age rest home/hospital. In one scene, actress Helen Walker delivers a bravura performance that showcases the heights to which film noir can rise. “I don’t know why you come to me, officer. My name is Anna Lee Jackson!” Alicia rants, wide-eyed and staring off into space. Diamond asks, “Are you sure you never took an ocean voyage?” A wild, bewildered look overtakes her. “I certainly would have remembered.”

Deciding to put her at ease, Diamond mentions that she has a way with flowers, which she has been using to decorate during their conversation. Smiling, she says, “You have to love them. They know the difference.” Her expression changes abruptly when she notices a caterpillar eating a flower. Diamond calmly asks why she didn’t kill the pest. “Oh, I couldn’t kill anything,” she replies, smiling again. “I can’t even cut these flowers. People want to see them come here while they are alive, not withering and dying from age.” Diamond explains that he understands why she feels so profoundly: “Because you saw your husband kill a man named Grazzi … I have a photograph of you taken seven years ago; you can have it if you like.” She slowly tears the photo into pieces, getting angrier as she does. “Listen to me, Alicia. Brown, unfortunately, is not a caterpillar. He doesn’t eat flowers; he devours people.” He then calmly explains that his girl, 24, was murdered last night and that Brown thought he was killing him. Alicia puts her hands to her ears, looking distressed and hysterical. “I don’t want to hear anymore. Can’t you see that I am sick?” Alicia cries out. Diamond tells her she is sick with fear, but is safe now. “You are perfectly sane.” Alicia responds, “I’d rather be insane and alive than sane and dead!” What a sequence, alive with emotion, perfectly demonstrating the fear Mr. Brown can provoke.

In an ultra-violent scene, Joe McClure attempts to turn Mingo and Fante against Mr. Brown by claiming that Alicia has been found and is speaking, as well as Susan Lowell. In the fog, Brown’s car is driven to a misty kill spot where Mingo and Fante appear from the haze, holding machine guns aimed at Brown. Joe gloats, “Mr. Brown, how do you feel now? Not so big! You took my job; you took my hotel. You thought you could push me right off the earth. You punk! Your accountant, your bookkeeper. Let him have it now; let him have it!” In a pivotal moment, the boys, focusing their guns on Mr. Brown, slowly turn their weapons in unison toward McClure. “Wait a minute, have you fellows gone loony? I’m McClure, you see me. This is McClure! Don’t do it, I’ll give you dough … Don’t do it.” Joe continues to plead for his life until Mr. Brown steps between the boys and Joe. Brown says, “I feel sorry for you, Joe.

I will do you a favor … you won’t hear the bullets. He takes the hearing aid out of Joe’s ear as the machine guns fire away in complete silence, no sounds, no music, simply the guns blazing, flickering light.

In a somewhat anti-climactic follow-up sequence, the two girls, Susan Lowell and Alicia Brown, meet in Diamond’s office, reluctant to testify against Brown, as the hard-nosed lieutenant finally convinces them to do the right thing. When Brown confronts Alicia as they exit the office, Brown only has to say hello and smile to knock his ex-wife into bed, unable to testify. Both Peterson and Diamond know they can’t use her as a witness. Meanwhile, three indictments for three murders cause Mingo to worry, although Fante still has faith that Brown will get them out of town. When Brown arrives to give the boys food and a rescue plan, and leaves, the boys open the box containing an exploding bomb. Brown is panicking and tying up all loose ends. Or so he thinks as he is later told by a waiter that Mingo is still alive. As Sam and Susan Lowell are riding the elevator up in Brown’s hotel, the car stops as a gunman enters and fires upon Sam Hill; Susan is taken hostage. In his deathbed confession, Mingo confesses that Brown hired him to kill three people to reflect the three indictments. Alicia reluctantly tells Diamond where Brown would probably flee.

The film’s climax, another John Alton masterpiece, occurs at a fog-shrouded private airport, where Brown and his captive, Lowell, escape. A bright beacon of light cuts through the fog as visibility is zero. As Susan lights a cigarette, Brown slaps her, the light telling where they are. Susan cries, “I want to be seen.” A car pulls up near the hangar door, cutting through the less dense fog, as the music swells. Brown runs to the rear of the hangar, now fearful. As the car lights turn off and the car door opens, Brown pulls out a pistol as he hears Diamond’s voice beckoning him to come out. The foggy silhouette of Diamond appears in front of the car as Brown fires wild shots. Diamond returns fire, saying, “You can’t get out, Brown !” Then Susan turns on Brown’s car headlights and shines them directly on Brown. Scurrying like a trapped rat, Brown runs left and right until he runs out of bullets, Diamond descending upon the powerless gangster. ‘I’m taking you to jail, Mr. Brown,” Diamonds says as Brown retorts, " You have to kill me first.” In this scene, Diamond towers over Brown, who cowers in fear. In a foggy silhouette, Brown fearfully runs as two policemen grab him, disappearing into the fog. In iconic noir photography, the silhouettes of Diamond and Lowell appear more like icons than individuals. As the music swells, they approach each other and walk off into the dense fog.

As Mr. Brown stated, he and Lt. Detective Diamond aren’t that different. Really? Brown, a gentleman with a hoodlum's couth and decorum. Always remaining calm and exuding style, or “personality,” Brown wishes to seem distinguished and legit. He thinks of himself as the bigger person, which helps him stay on top. Diamond, on the other hand, is filled with feelings of inferiority. He insults girlfriends who would lower themselves to date a cop. He is filled with rage and sometimes despair, often erupting into unexpected fits of anger. He is racked with guilt over things he’s done, and like the obsessed bloodhound, he is always a cop on the hunt. These men are as different as day and night. But The Big Combo, whether the police force or the criminal underworld, is composed of unique individuals well-defined in this film noir.

STUNNING FILM NOIR PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN ALTON

FANTE (LEE VAN CLEEF) AND MINGO (EARL HOLLIMAN) ESCORT SUSAN LOWE (JEAN WALLACE)