REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


THE BIG COMBO. Allied Artists, 1955. Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Robert Middleton, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman. Screenplay: Philip Yordan. Cinematography: John Alston. Director: Joseph Lewis.

   Wilde, a detective investigating mobster Conte’s activities, is obsessed with breaking up Conte’s operation and winning his mistress (Jean Wallace) for himself.

   Superbly scripted, directed, and photographed, this film by a director I had never heard of reminded me how little I know about this period. There is a brilliant beginning as Wallace runs down an alley with the fluidity of a trapped moth in beautifully composed and lighted frames.

   One of the strongest performances of his career is given by Brian Donlevy as a deposed monster chief who’s now relegated to backing up Conte. He wears a hearing aid, and Conte likes to torment him by turning up the mechanism and shouting, but he turns it off when Donlevy is gunned down by the Conte’s two henchmen (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman). The guns blaze in complete silence as the shots light up the dark and the film.

   The reaction of the more knowledgeable members of the audience was that this is certainly a fine film but the Lewis’s masterpiece is Gun Crazy (1950).

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 6, No. 4, July-August 1982.