Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...
Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ... Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...
Figure 114. Double Indemnity The act of humiliation and assertion of power depicted when Brown and his men capture Diamond in The Big Combo is perhaps what most powerfully represents the sexual theme in the film, at least psychologically. As seen above, Brown has Diamond seated on a chair while he tortures him (fig. 110), causing Diamond to become even more obsessed by him. The film seems to be celebrating a power-worshiping relationship, or sexual potency, and crime and violence appear to be other forms of manifesting this association. In fact, there is an affinity between sex and violence, combining a sense of fatalism with perverse sexuality. A scene such as the forcing of a bottle of hair tonic down Diamond’s throat is just as effective graphically as the sequence during which Mr Brown kisses Susan and the camera focuses in on Susan’s face, as Brown’s head sinks down her body, as he tells her he will do whatever she wants. These two particular examples combine the explicit brutality and the sexuality that we encounter in The Big Combo, in such a suggestive way (yet sufficiently shown by implication) that even the censors of that time, although unhappy with these sequences, could do nothing but let them remain in the film as shot. 386
2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic Transformation The Big Combo preserves its elusiveness as to sexual identity until the very last scene of the film, in which we see Diamond and Susan walking together (but not touching) in an airplane hangar. This atmospheric shot by John Alton becomes as important as the plot resolution of the film, as it shows the couple disappearing into a gloomy, allenveloping fog (fig. 115). The scene is emphatically symbolic: the thick layers of bleak fog keep them confined and separated, even though liberated from Mr Brown. The scene projects their future which, although not clear, still shows some light. Intended to endorse Susan’s choice of the ambivalent personal and professional attraction of Diamond over the dominant, unchanged masculinity of Brown, it fails to contradict what has gone before. Figure 115. The Big Combo The symbology of the fog is also extremely powerful in this film from a semiotic perspective. If in most noir productions we are often in the rain, for example, as one of the most distinctive visual elements of film noir, the symbol of fog here constitutes the uncertainty the characters are confronted with. The indistinguishable blurred images (one can just see a wheel barrow on the left corner) and the faded lights are further accentuated by the imperceptible noises and sounds that surround the premises. The black and white colours signify their emotion state of vagueness and ambiguity, and their posture (both 387
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Figure 114. Double Indemnity<br />
The act of humiliation and assertion of power depicted when Brown and his men<br />
capture Diamond in The Big Combo is perhaps what most powerfully represents the sexual<br />
theme in the film, at least psychologically. As seen above, Brown has Diamond seated on a<br />
chair while he tortures him (fig. 110), causing Diamond to become even more obsessed by<br />
him. The film seems to be celebrating a power-worshiping relationship, or sexual potency,<br />
and crime and violence appear to be other forms of manifesting this association. In fact,<br />
there is an affinity between sex and violence, combining a sense of fatalism with perverse<br />
sexuality. A scene such as the forcing of a bottle of hair tonic <strong>do</strong>wn Diamond’s throat is<br />
just as effective graphically as the sequence during which Mr Brown kisses Susan and the<br />
camera focuses in on Susan’s face, as Brown’s head sinks <strong>do</strong>wn her body, as he tells her he<br />
will <strong>do</strong> whatever she wants. These two particular examples combine the explicit brutality<br />
and the sexuality that we encounter in The Big Combo, in such a suggestive way (yet<br />
sufficiently shown by implication) that even the censors of that time, although unhappy<br />
with these sequences, could <strong>do</strong> <strong>no</strong>thing but let them remain in the film as shot.<br />
386