Richard Conte. 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. Cast. His main objective as a detective is to uncover what happened to a woman called "Alicia" from the crime boss's past. It has a tough tone and the hero is so flawed as to be near villainous — certainly he has an unhealthy obsession. What a classic noir thriller! A police lt. is ordered to stop investigating deadly crime boss Mr. Brown, because he hasn't been able to get any hard evidence against him. The disc has The Big Combo original screenplay as a PDF file and the package offers reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow for all films and a hardback book featuring new writing on all the films by noir experts and critics including Michael Brooke, Andrew Spicer, David Cairns and Tony Rayns and others. The Big Combo [DVD] [1955] SKU: 28842567. plus-circle Add Review. Low-key photography by John Alton, one of his best,[12] and a jazz-derived score by David Raksin with solo piano by Jacob Gimpel are in keeping with the film's tough mood. comment. 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. Chance events trap hitchhiking nightclub pianist Al Roberts in a tightening net of death, deception and blackmail. [citation needed], 1955 American film noir crime film by Joseph H. Lewis, List of films in the public domain in the United States, index of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Big_Combo&oldid=1000700341, Films about organized crime in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 16 January 2021, at 07:59. The Big Combo is considered her best film and along with you, I look forward to seeing it. Cast. Reviews Reviewer: Timothy Edison - favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 11, 2020 Subject: Lee Van Cleefe . • Uncompressed mono 1.0 PCM audio soundtrack. Meanwhile, Brown's right-hand man, McClure, wants to take over. Wilde also harbors half-admitted fantasies of riding to the rescue of Conte's remote and unwilling mistress (Jean Wallace, Wilde's off-screen wife). The Big Combo is a 1955 film noir that follows a tormented police lieutenant, who is on a personal crusade to bring down a sadistic gangster. With Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy. Great movie Conte is wonderful in this. The Big Combo, an independent film noir, is one of them. • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing • Commentary by noirchaeologist Eddie Muller. Through a fluke circumstance, a ruthless woman stumbles across a suitcase filled with $60,000, and is determined to hold onto it even if it means murder. The film stars Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte and Brian Donlevy, as well as Jean Wallace, who was Wilde's wife at the time. Filming was brought forward to start September 7, because of studio space availability. It … Wilde, meantime, has tracked down elusive Alicia, Conte's supposedly murdered wife (Helen Walker, the duplicitous psychiatrist in Nightmare Alley, in her last screen appearance); only she knows where the bodies are buried and can write her husband's death warrant....The Big Combo counts as one of the more sadistic instalments in the cycle, but the mayhem and executions are played as big set-pieces, as flourishes; Lewis draws on Alton's full fetch of tricks (and in one memorable instance, on the sound editor's) to highlight but at the same time soften their nastiness. In contrast, The Big Combo is one of few that has a brass (trumpets, etc.) The_Big_Combo_1955 Run time 1:27:28 Sound sound Year 1955 . Conte's casting meant the start date for another film Cry Vengeance had to be pushed back. Police Lt. Leonard Diamond is on a personal crusade to bring down the sadistic gangster Mr. Brown. It was originally going to be directed by Hugo Frugonese for producer Milton Sperling. The Big Combo Titles & main theme, composed by David Raksin Diamond is able to track Alicia to a sanitarium, where she is staying under another name. The film was released on Blu-ray in a new HD restoration in 2019 by Arrow Films in the UK and Eire. An armored truck driver and his ex-wife conspire with a gang to have his own truck robbed on the route. score. However, when his gunmen Fante and Mingo go to Diamond's apartment, they mistakenly shoot and kill Diamond's burlesque dancer girlfriend Rita instead. Need some help finding the best things to watch on Netflix? 95 of 106 people found this review helpful. The Big Combo This is another saga of the honest cop who lets nothing sway him from the self-appointed task of smashing a crime syndicate and its leader. Reviews Reviewer: Kentworth - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - September 8, 2014 Subject: Mr. Brown, Mr. Big . 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. The story doesn't have any of the he-she psychosexual politicking that juices the director's Gun Crazy, but that's no loss given this film's richer returns. This leads Diamond to suspect Brown did not kill Alicia but his boss Grazzi instead. The Big Combo may be the only film noir ever plugged on the I Love Lucy show (Cornel Wilde guest-starred in the episode which aired April 18, 1955). Diamond eventually learns through one of Brown's past accomplices that Alicia was actually Brown's wife. It could've been formulaic and forgettable if it was not for his main actors, Cornel Wilde as Leonard Diamond and Richard Conte as Mr. Brown, the latter piercing the screen. Shine that spotlight, girl! [10], Reviews of the movie today are mostly positive. Created in 1955, “The Big Combo” was written by the controversial Philip Yordan, and directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and serves as a perfect example of the 1950s era crime caper story, complete with enviable fedoras and genuine old school dames. Stars Lee Van Cleefe of Sergio Leone's Western trilogy . A doomed female hitchhiker pulls Mike Hammer into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious "great whatsit". The Big Combo Movie Lover: Stone Wallace from Winnipeg, Canada-- October, 1, 2005. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis. This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop. The Big Combo Cornel Wilde (Actor), Richard Conte (Actor), Joseph H. Lewis (Director) A police lt. is ordered to stop investigating deadly crime boss Mr. Brown, because he hasn't been able to get any hard evidence against him. A unfaithful wife plots with her lover to kill her husband, but the lover is accidentally killed instead. Chris Dashiell on the website CineScene finds the dialogue "run of the mill" but praises the film's director, writing that "Lewis had a remarkable ability to infuse poetry into the most banal material, and The Big Combo is one of his best efforts... it's not as startlingly inventive as Lewis's best film, Gun Crazy (1949), but it's a quality B-film, satisfying and dark. However, Brown's plane does not show up and the film climaxes in a foggy hangar shootout. It's especially instructive as an example of a movie with a visual surface that completely hides its low budget origin. Police Lt. Diamond is told to close his surveillance of suspected mob boss Mr. Brown because it's costing the department too much money with no results. Jean Wallace. The Big Combo, from director Joseph H. Lewis, released in the waning years of film noir’s popularity, is an example of the latter. The set-pieces are fierce, as is the Casablanca tweak of the last shot, and Wallace's performance—a sad spectacle of a hurting creature caught between light and dark, good and evil—is one of noir's great unheralded triumphs. At one point, Brown advises one of his heavies to shoot himself in the head if caught. The Big Combo by Grant Tracey: The Big Combo (1955), Allied Artists' seedy B-noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and photographed exquisitely by John Alton, opens with Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) splashed in slanting shadows as she runs through tunnels along a boxing ring. The Big Combo. Doctors Jo Wilson, April Kepner, and Andrew DeLuca share the episodes they think are essential to understanding their characters. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis. Brown orders a hit on Diamond. "[11], The staff at Variety magazine liked the film's direction, music and photography, despite "a rambling, not-too-credible plot." This leads to stage work in 1935 after he was spotted by Elia Kazan and John Garfield. Syndicate head Mr. Brown, but they betray and murder him to become big-time... Second female lead get a sneak peek of the jobs he had was a singing waiter Connecticut... Offers of $ 75,000 of some fortuitous circumstances and tries to persuade Susan to a private airport where he to. Woman called `` Alicia '' from the crime boss 's past accomplices that was. 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