The Big Combo (1955)
A police lieutenant obsessed with both taking down a sadistic crime boss and stealing his girlfriend chases down a missing woman's disappearance that turns out to hide the gangster's most damning secret.
John Alton’s cinematography pushes noir’s chiaroscuro to an almost abstract extreme, and the notorious torture-by-hearing-aid scene got past the censors only because they could not see what the soundtrack made you hear.
Background
Joseph H. Lewis, who had earlier directed Gun Crazy, made this film for Allied Artists with a script by Philip Yordan. Cornel Wilde plays a police lieutenant, Richard Conte is the crime boss Mr Brown, and Jean Wallace, Wilde’s wife at the time, plays Brown’s girlfriend. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman play Brown’s two henchmen, whose relationship is hinted at in a way unusual for the period.
What to watch for
The reason to watch is John Alton’s cinematography. Alton wrote a book called Painting with Light, and in this film he uses very few lights, letting shadows swallow half the frame; a scene in a fog-bound airport hangar is one of the most striking in noir. The hearing-aid torture scene is notorious. Later filmmakers have often cited the film’s style. It is not always subtle, but it shows how much a great cinematographer could do with a modest budget.
