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.
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