Nisa Chamblin
Nar Avant Garde
2/23/2011
Movie Term Reflection

Through chapters four, five, and six in our class book Film Art: An Introduction we learn the fundamentals of film; mise-en-scene, editing, and cinematography. Both mise-en-scene, editing, and cinematography deal with what is happening inside of the film frame, this includes the setting, costume, lighting, framing, photographic aspects, characters, editing, and cuts of the shot. Together these specific fundamental elements partake in the films that we watch providing dimension, mood, and style. The Big Combo is the epitome of film noir. Film noir’s visual style conceives a mood in a film with instability, double identities, and somewhat shifting values by using it’s techniques of darkness in shadows and night time scenes. In The Big Combo the main characters seem to have double identities “shadowed” upon them throughout the movie through silhouettes, shadows, and reflections, and not only do they have these double identities through mise-en-scene but also in the narrative. In the opening hospital sequence in The Big Combo, just as detective Diamond comes up the stairs and through the door we have a horizontal angle very slightly looking up (a low angle) into the hallway. As detective Diamond steps into the door past the officer the camera angle stays the same, both Mr. Diamond and the standing officer are in medium long shot. With the medium long shot we are able to make out the two nurses and reception desk in the back. In the hallway of the hospital the high-key lighting makes the contrast between the dark and lighter areas somewhat minimal but still noticeable. The two nurses in the back are standing in what seems to appear as a strong backlighting; in the medium long shot the nurses have attached shadows among them stretching down the floor of the hallway to Mr. Diamond.
As detective Diamond comes around the corner of the hallway the following shot stays with him. The lighting as the camera shifts with Mr. Diamond to keep his moving figure onscreen stays constant. When he comes around the corner he bumps into Mr. Brown and McClure, both situated with each other, McClure works for Mr. Brown, though McClure used to have been Mr. Brown’s boss at some point ago. When all three men are together in sharp focus in a medium shot frame. Since detective Diamond is in the back there is a bright backlighting from the rear medium right that shines of the shoulder of his suit, this creates McClure’s attached upper body shadow to cast on the other side of the body away from the backlight. We see Mr. Brown sitting in the front with hard under lighting. Brown and McClure are shown in medium close-up. Since Brown gives Diamond no sense of power at all McClure is positioned in between them because he (Diamond) is not worthy to be spoken to directly. The positioning of them all has a representation of where there power in the narrative holds as well. Diamond is positioned in that back looking at Brown and questioning him, though he cannot come close to brown because McClure is positioned right between them as someone in the middle, who is Brown’s go-to guy. Mr. Brown who is in a medium close-up is frontally sitting down with a smirk on his face, giving a hint like “I already won this battle between us”. In this scene when all three men encounter each other their shadows are very starkly present as well. As they are talking about Susan, Mr. Brown’s girl, the door opens and she is rolled out from a stretcher.
As the men turn around to catch a glimpse and moment of Susan the camera cuts to the medium shot of Susan being brought out from the stretcher in a strong backlighting as she is coming out of the door. As the doctors roll her out, the camera pans to the left and we get to have a medium close-up of Susan as she is lying on the stretcher slightly unconscious repeatedly saying “Alicia”. The camera again cuts to Mr. Brown and detective Diamond. Diamond and Brown are facing forward into the camera as well in medium close-up. On their bodies there is strong fill light coming in from the left side of the camera and key light highlighting their faces as they watch Susan go down the corridor. In this scene we watch as Mr. Brown and Diamond give intense gazes as she is wheeled down the corridor. We watch Diamond as he is talking to Mr. Brown, but we notice that Diamond is watching Brown watch Susan as she is going down the corridor. The men stop walking and it cuts to a reverse shot of Susan being brought down the corridor and back to Brown watching Susan and Detective Diamond watching Brown. The two have some words exchanged between each other (for brown it is indirectly to Diamond through McClure) and before the scene ends we get a shot medium close-up of brown and McClure looking at Diamond with a reverse long shot of Diamond walking down the corridor, the scene ends with discontinuity editing and fades out of Diamond walking into Susan laying in her bed.
Through these film forms in the hospital scene with brown, Diamond, and McClure it can be taken that the positioning, lighting, and shadows in this sequence can also be looked at the underlying theme in film noir and the shifting values that play a part in the redefined identities in the characters of The Big Combo.