THE BIG COMBO (1955)

Police Lieutenant Lou Diamond (Cornell Wilde) is obsessed with bringing down gangster and murderer Mr. Brown (Richard Conte). He’s also obsessed with Mr. Brown’s girl toy Susan (Jean Wallace). Rough Diamond employs every tactic at his disposal, but the calm, sadistic Mr. Brown eludes him at every turn. The film is surprisingly violent for its day - in one very graphic scene, Mr. Brown tortures Diamond in a way that, if described here, would make every male reader squirm. But that was nothing new to the films of Joseph Lewis, whose GUN CRAZY features a remarkable real-time bank heist that's years ahead of its time and has never been equaled. In THE BIG COMBO, John Alton did the cinetography. The entire film is rich with textured darknesses, and the climax is dazzling, almost experimental. Lewis matches Alton's images with a frenetic jazz score. But perhaps most striking about this film is how modern it seems. Admittedly, some elements are dated, but its approach to crime and criminals seems more akin to the crime films of the ‘70s or ‘90s (like RESERVOIR DOGS) than it does to the mainstream of '50s film noir.