Genio del crimen

A very good gangster flick and evocative film-noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis. A zealous cop(Cornel Wilde) seeks the aid of a gangster's(Richard Conte) ex-girlfriend(Jean Wallace)in bringing down a crime syndicate. Conte's character is relentless as he rules his corrupt world with murder, gunplay and torture. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman are his minions and Brian Donlevy is a handicapped mentor of sorts. Supporting cast features Helen Walker and Robert Middleton. Terrific lighting and photography make this an exceptional crime drama where shades of gray makes THE BIG COMBO a notch above the ordinary. Note:off-screen Wilde and Wallace are Mr. & Mrs.

Cornel Wilde stars with wife Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy, Richard Conte, Lee van Cleef, Earl Holliman, and Robert Middleton in "The Big Combo." Wilde, who was one of the producers, had the idea of turning his wife into a serious actress. She certainly was pretty. For those who may not know it, Wallace was first married to Franchot Tone, so Wilde became their children's' stepfather.

The story concerns a police detective Diamond (Wilde) who is after the head of a far-reaching mob, Mr. Brown (Conte). He's been ordered to stop investigating because he can't find any evidence and also, he is in love with Brown's girlfriend Susan (Wallace) and the department is over budget thanks to his obsession.

When Susan attempts suicide, Diamond is allowed to follow one last lead, which is the name Alicia that Susan muttered in the hospital.

Meanwhile Brown sends his thugs, Fante and Mingo (Van Cleef and Holliman) to stop Diamond. By mistake, they murder Rita, Diamond's girlfriend. Now nothing will stop Diamond until he gets his revenge.

Good noir, with Wilde in top form a a tough guy. I admit he's never been a favorite of mine - he just does not warm up the camera at all. In order to avoid the production code, the sexual scene between Diamond and Rita is cleverly managed, and there are only subtle indications that Fante and Mingo are gay lovers - less subtle once you're aware of it and watch it again.

Helen Walker plays Brown's wife, and alas, the years weren't kind to her due to her trial and bad publicity in the 1940s. Here she's in a character role. By 1968, she would be dead, at the age of 47.

Richard Conte is fantastic as Brown, cruel and mean with no redeeming qualities. He pulls it off perfectly.

Recommended - the photography throughout is excellent, but the final shot at the end is stunning.

There really should be a deluxe DVD box-set of films with "The Big" in their titles -- preferably "The Big" followed by one more word.

Naturally, you would have to have Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep" from 1946 and Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat" from 1953.

If I wanted to attract hate mail, I could probably also insist on including two David Nelson circus films, particularly 1959's "The Big Circus," but also the rather overlooked "The Big Show" from 1961.

From 1955 alone you could come up with Robert Aldrich's "The Big Knife" and Joseph H. Lewis' s "The Big Combo."

"The Big Combo" is an unusually good film noir with more of the chiaroscuro lighting effects than you get in some other more famous noir classics and way more than you get in the archetypal David Nelson circus film.

You also get a gay couple -- very unusual for a 1955 Hollywood film! Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman play two thugs named Fante and Mingo, who work for bigger thug Richard Conte. Some classic Hollywood films, as reported in Vito Russo's "The Celluloid Closet," have some fairly specific gay content, but some of them only have the reputation and not much content. However, it's really there in "The Big Combo." Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman live together, slay together, and apparently love each other. Watch the basement hideout scene near the climax. They caress each other! It's the most believable relationship in a very brutal and fascinating movie.

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). Coming late in the noir cycle and directed by Joseph Lewis, it seized a position as one of its most innovative and stylish titles. And, with the wizardly John Alton behind the camera, it kicks film noir's distinctive look up into another, rarefied dimension (Alton must have been emulating the Dutch Masters – spare traceries of light limn almost abstract patterns on the screen's primordial blackness).

The story, too, stays a primal one of obsession, lust and revenge. Ninety-six-fifty-a-week cop Wilde lives in a cheap flat across from a burlesque house, one of whose headliners (Helene Stanton) he occasionally `sees.' But his only passion is for nailing suave but savage crime boss Richard Conte. Iin a performance brimming with cool menace, Conte is fond of saying `First is first and second is nobody.' 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). Conte's so possessive that he assigns an intimate twosome of torpedoes (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman) as her full-time bodyguards (since they're gay, he trusts them to serve as eunuchs). But when they fail to prevent her overdosing on pills, she falls into Wilde's hands at hospital and starts to babble about a woman called Alicia.

Another wild card is Conte's lieutenant Brian Donleavy, over the hill and hard of hearing, who chafes at playing second fiddle; he saw himself as heir to the organization when unseen capo Grazzi `retired' to Sicily. His grudge against his boss makes him reckless, placing the whole `combination,' or combo, in jeopardy. 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. There's a streak of sadism in the casting, too: Both Wallace's attempted suicide and Walker's dissipation bring to mind the actresses' private troubles. Innovative and striking, The Big Combo comes as close as any film in the noir cycle to being an art-house triumph; it consolidates Lewis' reputation as an erratic director who was nonetheless capable – here, and with his Gun Crazy – of pulling off something unexpected yet extraordinary.

Here is yet another gem from the forgotten noir vault. Director Joseph Lewis trades in the quasi-cinema verite style of his GUN CRAZY(1950) for strictly in-studio work and still hits the jackpot. Cinematographer John Alton works his customary chiaroscuro artistry on a fairly straightforward tale of one frustrated but determined police detective longing to collar one supremely confident crime boss.

Cornel Wilde plays the cop with stolid righteousness (although the lawman isn't above trysting with a leggy striptease artist). But the filmmakers put the main focus on the calculating yet tortured (and torturing) mobster played by Richard Conte. Conte, spitting out many of his lines with measured bile, is brilliant: a smug, know-it-all killer backed by the ever-ready menace of Lee Van Cleef and the studied goofiness of Earl Holliman. (As written, these two bring a very special dynamic to post-World War II crime melodrama). Brian Donleavy is on hand as a washed up but still scheming mob kingpin. And Jean Wallace plays the high-falutin' moll who yearns to go back to her world of piano recitals and afternoon teas but who just can't get enough of Conte's sinister mojo. This low budget but highly effective noir makes an excellent double feature with another cheap but powerful film of the genre, BEHIND LOCKED DOORS. Both films are highly recommended.