This is a showstopper noir film. It’s as if the previous fifteen years had been a warm-up for Lewis’s epic crime bust-up.
Although this genre is known for some of the most indelible detectives—Marlowe and Spade, in particular—it isn’t usual for a noir to have a cop for its central character. This one does, a literal diamond in the rough.
The plot is simple: Jean Wallace’s Susan is Mr. Brown’s girlfriend, and so much the worse for her. Brown, played by Richard Conte, is the biggest bad guy in town, conglomerating all the crime syndicates into one giant one. Think Amazon: one-stop shopping for all your crime needs.
Susan Lowell, victim until the final shot
“Brown’s not a man, he’s an organization, and I need money to fight one,” Lt. Diamond says early on, and boy does he know his prey. “It’s like draining a swamp with a teaspoon.”
Our main guy, policeman Lt. Diamond (Cornel Wilde), is hyper-vigilant with Susan as he’s in love with her, and so much the worse for him.
The Big Combo starts with a bang and doesn’t let up for a second. Every shot is canted just-so, with Alton’s expert camera angles making the audience squirm. The opening sequence of light and shadows shows a woman running and men pursuing and sets the stage for the whole affair.
Susan is trying to escape the boxing match and really, her boyfriend, but his goons keep up with her easily as she’s in heels. Soon they catch her and bring her back to face the music.
Brown doles out orders to Mingo and Fante
Conte’s Mr. Brown as a gangster-CEO is absolutely spell-binding, so much so that we can understand why Susan is both drawn and repelled by him. Even to my jaundiced 21st-century perspective, the scene in which Mr. Brown removes a duplicitous underling’s hearing aid so that he can’t hear the bullets coming for him is especially despicable.
But Brown’s soft gaze and quick patter does a lot to make him sympathetic, even when he intones heartless lines like, “First is first; second is nobody.”
He looks for trouble; she looks to him
As Lt. Diamond gets closer to making an arrest, he zeroes in on Brown’s past to provide evidence. The Swede captain and the half-sane Alicia, Mr. Brown’s emotionally damaged first wife, witnessed one of Brown’s early murders, so Lt. Diamond searches them out to get the goods on Brown.
The Swedish-captain-turned-antique-shop-owner is especially memorable as a reluctant stool pigeon, intoning the doomed line, “Nothing kills me. I’ll die in Stockholm like my great-grandfather, age 93. I’m not scared of anyone, including you, so get out.” (Too little too late for Mr. Dryer; he never makes it back to Stockholm.)
A mesmerizing Rita makes the wrong choice
As things heat up for Brown, Lt. Diamond takes the brunt of his anger. Even though the fair Lt. is in love with the gangster’s moll, he still has a sweetheart of a sweetheart on the sly, who gets killed for the simple crime of smoking a cigarette in her boyfriend’s apartment.
Although Jean Wallace is capably captivating as Susan Lowell, Helene Stanton’s Rita is moreso, and never gets her comeuppance, always forced to play second fiddle.
Astounded she’s been passed over for Susan, again
After Rita’s murder, our fair Lt. goes on the rampage, ostensibly to avenge his sweetie, but more likely to get rid of Brown so he can take a crack at Susan. At the end, Sue finally gets to play an active part in taking her boyfriend down, using a spotlight.
In its entirety, The Big Combo has the pedal to the metal from the first scene of Susan’s fruitless escape attempts to her lover’s similarly doomed attempts in the finale.
No memorable friendships here
The ending gives us the same big feelings as Casablanca, without the promise of a memorable friendship. At the end, the film’s characters are just as shattered and damaged as they ever were, but now we know to what extent.
-MH