There are many reasons to watch the 1955 classic film noir The Big Combo: its ruthless villain, his colorful henchmen, plenty of dramatic shadows and some sly naughtiness by the filmmakers. In his most flamboyant performance, Richard Conte plays mob boss Mr. Brown. Cornel Wilde (also the film’s producer) plays Lieutenant Diamond, a cop with two obsessions, to bring down the crime lord and to take his woman.
Mr. Brown is supremely confident, with good reason, and so arrogant that he only addresses Diamond, standing two feet away, through Brown’s own lackey, McClure (Brian Donlevy). Brown and his henchmen ((Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman)) are also cruelly ruthless, carrying out the usual beatings and murders, and also torture by hearing aid and by boozeboarding.
However, the justifiably scary Mr. Brown has a pair of vulnerabilities. The first is his need to control his emotionally brittle girlfriend Susan (Jean Wallace, married to producer and co-star Wilde at the time); the anguished Susan wants out, even by suicide if that’s what it takes. Brown assigns his goons to keep her on board, but nobody should bet on her reliability.
Mr. Brown also needs to keep secret what happened to a woman named Alicia. The search for documentation of Alicia’s identity and her fate is the MacGuffin of The Big Combo. Brown and Diamond are racing to find the evidence before the other.
Joseph Lewis was a fine noir director (Gun Crazy), but this was at the end of his feature film career, and the noir greatness is furnished by one of the two greatest noir cinematographers, John Alton. Alton does a lot with not much, and the nighttime streets and the staircases are compelling, right up to the foggy airport, with one of the most iconic final shots in all of film noir.
Director Joseph Lewis and his collaborators did successfully slip some things past the censors. Conte’s Mr. Brown reminds Susan of how he pleases her. And Fante (Van Cleef) and Mingo (Holliman) are a couple, as Holliman confirmed decades later to Eddie Muller.
Richard Conte is one of my favorite film noir actors, always emanating charm and self-confidence (and displaying immaculate posture). This may be Conte’s showiest performance, as he gets to magnify that confidence into the twisted ego of a sadistic bully, most notably when humiliating his own man McClure.
The rest of the cast (Wilde, Wallace, Donlevy) is solid, with especially entertaining performances from Van Cleef and Holliman. Helene Stanton has a vivid supporting turn as Diamond’s ill-fated girlfriend. Noir standouts Whit Bissell and Philip Van Zandt had their scenes deleted.
The Big Combo regularly plays on Turner Classic Movies and can be streamed on Amazon and Fandango.
