The Big Combo (1955) [Film Noir] [Crime]

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Police Lt. Leonard Diamond is on a personal crusade to bring down sadistic gangster Mr. Brown. He’s also dangerously obsessed with Brown’s girlfriend, the suicidal Susan Lowell. His main objective as a detective is to uncover what happened to a woman called “Alicia” from the crime boss’s past. Mr. Brown, his second-in-command McClure and thugs Fante and Mingo kidnap and torture the lieutenant, then pour a bottle of alcohol-based hair tonic down his throat before letting him go. Diamond eventually learns through one of Brown’s past accomplices that Alicia was actually Brown’s wife. The accomplice suspects that Alicia was sent away to Sicily with former mob boss Grazzi, then murdered, tied to the boat’s anchor and permanently submerged. Diamond questions a Swede named Dreyer, who was the skipper of that boat (but now operates an antiques store as a front, bankrolled by Brown). Dreyer denies involvement, but this doesn’t prevent him from being murdered by McClure within seconds after he leaves the shop. Diamond tries to persuade Susan to leave Brown and admits he might be in love with her. He shows her a photo of Brown, Alicia and Grazzi together on the boat. Susan finally confronts Brown about his wife and is told she is still alive in Sicily, Italy, living with Grazzi.

Brown next orders a hit on Diamond. However, when his gunmen Fante and Mingo go to Diamond’s apartment, they mistakenly shoot and kill the cop’s burlesque dancer girlfriend Rita instead. Diamond sees an up-to-date photo of Alicia but realizes it wasn’t taken in Sicily (since there’s snow on the ground). This leads Diamond to suspect Brown didn’t kill Alicia but his boss Grazzi instead. Diamond is able to track Alicia to a sanitarium, where she is staying under another name. He asks for her help. Brown’s right-hand man, McClure, wants to take over. He plots with Fante and Mingo to ambush Mr. Brown, but ends up getting killed himself because they are loyal to the boss. At police headquarters, Brown shows up with a writ of habious corpus, effectively preventing Alicia to testify against her husband. Brown also brings a big stash of “money” to Fante and Mingo while they are hiding out from the police, but the box turns out to contain a bomb that apparently kills both. Brown shoots the lieutenant’s partner Sam and kidnaps Susan, planning to fly away to safety. Diamond finds a witness that could finally nail the elusive gangster — Mingo, who survived the blast and confesses that Brown was behind it all. Alicia is able to help Diamond figure out where Brown was likely to take Susan, a private airport where Brown intends to board a getaway plane.

However, the plane doesn’t show up and the film climaxes in a foggy airplane hangar shootout. Susan shines a bright light in Brown’s eyes and the lieutenant places him under arrest. The last scene shows the silhouetted figures of Diamond and Susan in the fog, considered to be one of the iconic images of film noir.

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Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, produced by Sidney Harmon, written by Philip Yordan, starring Lee J. Cobb as Lt. Ed Cullen, Jane Wyatt as Lois Frazer, John Dall as Andy Cullen, Lisa Howard as Janet Cullen, Harlan Warde as Howard Frazer, Tito Vuolo as Pietro Capa, Charles Arnt as Ernest Quimby, Marjorie Bennett as Muriel Quimby, Alan Wells as Nito Capa, Mimi Aguglia as Mrs. Capa, Bud Wolfe as Officer Blair, Morgan Farley as Rushton, Howard Negley as Detective Olson, William Gould as Doc Munson, Art Millan as United Airlines Clerk, Gordon Richards as Albert the Butler, Terry Frost as Detective, Mario Siletti as Machetti and Charles Victor as Attorney.

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Source: “The Big Combo” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 28 February 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Combo.

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47 Replies to “The Big Combo (1955) [Film Noir] [Crime]”

  11. You do have the completely wrong cast listed in the notes above!!! No Lee J. Cobb… Should be:
    Cornel Wilde Police Lt. Leonard Diamond
    Richard Conte Mr. Brown
    Brian Donlevy Joe McClure
    Jean Wallace Susan Lowell
    Lee Van Cleef .Fante
    Earl Holliman Mingo

  13. 1:15:05 – "I can't swallow any more salami". I had to run it twice. Did he actually fucking say that? This is after seeing Mingo on his knees greedily sucking wine, running down his face, from a dribbling spigot. Fante calls him over and very solicitously offers him more meat. Mingo it seems has had enough "sausage" for one day and downcast assumes his subordinate position.
    1:15:40 – "Put your thumb in my mouth".
    1:16:06 – "I thought you said you didn't want any more salami".

  14. Mr Brown goes up the river & the lucky couple walk away, into the fog ~ sound familiar?
    What did you think of that, Amanda? It took me all this time to watch it. What was it? 3 days; 4 days; to watch a movie but i like those old movies.

  16. I like how everyone in here is using guns, but there was no outcry to ban guns back then!! They were real men back then. When I watch these movies I see a world that had meaning and value. Our president is a coward and so are the rest of our leaders! The West is dying, just look at these movies (American film noir films) and compare them to our films today… America used to stand for something more than degeneracy…

  19. ** Two Star Film – no snap crackle or pop in this mess of a crime thriller film noir. Poor script, very stiff acting, overdone tough guy character, really cardboard like girlfriend, and detective was a total wimp. Filmed in darkness that lent an aura of depressing about it. Pass on this seemingly taut thriller which its definitely not. At all.

  21. I would seriously drink Jean Wallace's sweat. Chick tried to kill herself twice. Gulp, 1000% gorgeous. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Twice. Pills the first time, stabbed herself in the guts with a knife the second. You kidding me? I would have eaten her right after she died she was so perfect. God what a babe.

  35. Did anyone catch that the scene when they are rounding up Mr. Brown's men at about 18:20 is the same piece of film when they rounded up the suspects in "He Walked by Night"? I have never seen a movie use the same scene as in another movie!

  36. Here's the actual cast:

    Cornel Wilde as Police Lt. Leonard Diamond
    Richard Conte as Mr. Brown
    Brian Donlevy as Joe McClure
    Jean Wallace as Susan Lowell
    Robert Middleton as Police Capt. Peterson
    Lee Van Cleef as Fante
    Earl Holliman as Mingo
    Helen Walker as Alicia Brown
    Jay Adler as Sam Hill
    John Hoyt as Nils Dreyer
    Ted de Corsia as Bettini
    Helene Stanton as Rita
    Roy Gordon as Audubon
    Whit Bissell as Doctor (scenes deleted) (as Whit Bissel)
    Steve Michaell as Bennie Smith – Boxer
    Baynes Barron as Young Detective
    James McCallion as Frank – Technician
    Tony Michaels as Photo Technician
    Brian O'Hara as Attorney Malloy
    Bruce Sharpe Detective
    Michael Mark as Fred – Hotel Clerk
    Philip Van Zandt as Mr. Jones (scenes deleted)
    Donna Drew as Miss Hartleby

  38. What a fatuous, rhetorical, pompous, condescending, academically effete excuse of a response. And using Fritz Lang as a supporting example, indeed! You need to watch the enfeebled, cop out ending to "Contempt" again, because you missed the artifice that inundated every one else who saw that film. Just like Chabrol, who always had to have someone die to have an excuse to end his movies, Lang fell into that trap with "Contempt." So give your gibberish a rest because I am not buying.

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