I watched The Big Combo (1955) again last night. This shot stuck out to me as a great use of light, shadow, and space, with characters entering from the depth and foreground, and exiting frame right.
Starring Cornel Wilde and Jean Wallace, and directed by Joseph H. Lewis and with photography by John Alton, a later film in the classic noir period, the film frequently gets mentioned for its cinematography1. There is something a little late-night-TV about the movie, and its 1.85:1 aspect ratio makes it a more contemporary touchstone where style is concerned.
- Currently, an image from the end of the film lives at the top of the Wikipedia entry for film noir. ↩