The Big Combo – Micro Analysis

At the start of the sequence, the audience is greeted with an establishing shot of New York, this is to set the scene, and show where the film is set, so that the audience know the surroundings of where the characters are. Whilst the opening credits roll the camera flies over the city, whilst non-diegetic jazz music plays in the background. The music is quite calm, and may give the audience an idea that this is quite a calm film, and is quite casual. Whilst the credits still roll, the camera changes from an establishing shot and fades to a longshot of a New York City street, as the camera tilts down to show the scene.

The credits then fade away, and the longshot of the busy city street is shown, you can see the period of time this is set in through the costumes of the men and women on the street. As you can see they are all pretty much wearing quite classy/smart clothing. As most of the men wear suits and the women are wearing dresses or smart looking clothing. This shows that New York City can be a place of wealth, and is a very busy, business type place. In the frame the audience can also see the typical new-york taxis and policemen on the streets, within the busy commotion.

An elliptical edit is then used from the street and a transition is used to show the audience a long shot of a boxing ring, low-key lighting is used around the boxing ring whilst the rest of the room has low-key lighting. Diegetic, synchronous sounds are used in this short clip whilst in the boxing ring, as the audience can hear the crowd clapping, and people in the audience shouting things towards the boxers.

The camera then cuts to a low angle, long shot of one of the corridors outside the boxing ring; the audience sees a dark, silhouette of a man leaning against a wall smoking. The man cannot be identified due to him being in the dark, this scene uses typical film noir conventions with this character, as the costume he wears consists of a hat, suit etc. and is smoking in the dark against a wall. In this scene, the audience sees a woman run from the end of the corridor, as she gets closer to the camera whilst she runs from the shadows, the audience then sees two men running after her, they both come from different corridors in this scene. The camera angle remains the same throughout.

A continuity edit is then used and the camera cuts to a long shot of the woman still running away from the men, noir style lighting is also used to create shadows in this scene, as she runs through shadows and through light. The audience can still hear the diegetic sounds of the boxing crowd, as you can still hear them clapping and cheering from the first clip of the boxing ring.

More continuity edits are used to show the pace of the woman running away from the two men, a long shot is used to show her run through the doors of a bar, and then the audience can see the two men who run after her. Once the women is running through the bar, another long shot is used from the end of the bar, to show two men sat at the bar, and their reaction as they see the people running through the doors. The lighting used is mainly low key in these places, with a small amount of high key lighting to show a small amount of light in these scenes. The low-key lighting is used to create the film noir effect, to generate shadows and darkness around the characters.

The two men then finally catch up to the women they are chasing, as a continuity edit cuts to a medium shot of the two men stood side-by-side to the women, with her in the middle. Lighting is used well and correctly in this shot, as the three characters in the middle of the frame are well lit in quite high-key lighting, whereas the background of the characters and what surrounds them is low-key. This is to create a type of ‘spotlight’ around the characters and to tell the audience that they are the key characters in this frame. The sound used is mainly dialogue, whilst the audience can still hear the boxing crowd although it is quiet.

The woman then walks away from the two men for a second, and a medium close-up shows her in the light, the camera then slowly zooms out to show a medium shot of the woman, and the two men then surround her side-by-side again. The sound used is non-diegetic music, which sounds quite mysterious and matches the scene and also matches the film noir vibe – as it sounds quite mysterious. The camera then cuts to a longshot of them stood still, and the characters walk away. Whilst they walk away, a pan is used to the right to show the bar. The man at the bar stands up from his chair, and walks in a direction which is quite close to the camera, as it tracks the character and shows a medium close-up of him.