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.
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