Analysis of 'The Big Combo' and film noir elements

Where the usual noir takes place in a nightmare world, this one seems to inhabit a dream: there's no longer fear in the images, but rather a distanced, idealized beauty.Considering the reputation and fame The Big Combo has reached, it might initially seem like a long and talky movie, lacking energy. The protagonist of the story, Police Lieutenant Dimond (Cornel Wilde) seems like a bore. He is the kind of guy who is so obsessed to get everything right, and taking the right road, that he gets mad when a partner or superior dares to meet his vigilante tactics with an understandable amount of incredulity. The antagonist of the story, on the contrary, the crime Boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) is nearly sympathetic. Yes, he keeps his girl, Susan (Jean Wallace) in an emotional state, close to domestic abuse. Yes, he’s a bully. And, yes, he probably killed his former boss, but he’s free to do so, due to his hypocritical self-righteousness.

There isn’t anything particularly unusual about The Big Combo’s narrative elements. A cop determined to take down the bad guy, pulling all the strings in a crime. Caught in the middle is a girl, a sad-eyed moll who realizes she’s in for more than she can handle, and don’t see any way out, other than ending her own life. She attempts this in the beginning of The Big Combo, and then spends the time looking as if she wished she’d had luck with doing so. That is an example of what kind of extreme measures The Big Combo take to re-introduce the movie genre of noir, push the genre to beyond its limits, and to keep the audience interested throughout an otherwise quite dull movie. Brown isn’t just the bad guy, but also a sadist who holds Susan caught in the middle, in an erotic thrall. One scene, for example, shows him, moving in on Susan with such a predatory intensity, that her reaction is nothing but fear. Still, you can see, she can’t help but feeling raptured. Then there’s Lieutenant Diamond, whose interest in the case he is investigating, extends beyond just stopping the crime, and all the way to his own obsession with Susan, which seems to motivate just as much, maybe even more, as any other desire to see justice done.