The Big Combo
The Big Combo
The Most Startling Story The Screen Has Ever Dared Reveal!
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.
He goes after Brown’s girlfriend, who despises him, for information instead.Director:
Writer:
Producer:
Cinematographer:
Joseph H. Lewis
Philip Yordan
Security Pictures Theodora Productions
John Alton
Grading:
Year of production:
Length:
Gosia Grzyb C.S.I., SKF
1955
87 min.
“ You have to love a film that has one of its central characters, criminal kingpin Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), insist throughout that “First is first and second is nobody.” It’s the kind of belligerent, aggressively individualistic mantra characteristic of the tough male characters who dominated the American film noir canon of the 1940s and 1950s. Philip Yordan’s script for The Big Combo is loaded with equally pithy expressions of masculine bravado, but as with many a classic noir film, these over-assertions of masculine potency are obliquely undermined by elements of characterisation, visual style and narrative structure.“
– Rose Capp –
