Response paper «The Killers»

Response paper «The Killers»

The Killers (1946) is exemplary film noir from Robert Siodmak, with an unpredictable plot, adrenaline-pumping scenes and charismatic characters, which is makes him one of noir’s crucial directors. The film is as nested with weird resonances as it is glamorous with obvious pleasures: Ava Gardner as lush and irresistible as a femme fatale could ever be; Burt Lancaster, in his debut performance; the immaculate, shadowy mise-en-scène of Siodmak and cinematographer Woody Bredell. Movie is based on Ernest Hemingway’s short story with a same name which is published in 1927. Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers is one of the great short stories of the 20th century. In a taut 3,000 words it recounts a visit to a small town outside Chicago by two laconic, wisecracking hit men, Max and Al, who take over a local diner one late afternoon to kill a regular patron, a down-and-out ex-boxer known as the Swede. When he doesn’t turn up they leave. Hemingway’s fictive alter ego, Nick Adams, is in the diner, and he goes to warn the Swede, who lies passive in his rooming house, making no effort to escape.

Robert Siodmak’s excellent craftsmanship is the reason that makes The Killers such an interesting work, just look at the tense opening sequence and see how he skillfully puts his camera at the right place and without making things look too “cinematic” he builds a gripping atmosphere that is hard to forget. And also in the heist scene – which happens entirely in flashback – he only uses one take with a floating camera that chases the characters as they are doing their job. Miklos Rosza’s score as always is compelling and in some scenes – like the opening scene – enhances the thrilling qualities of the film in such a way that it’s impossible to even imagine the film without those striking notes.

Less a narrative than a Hollywood neighborhood, “The Killers” is populated by slang-slinging tough guys with tilted fedoras and dangled cigarettes and gorgeous dames who are not to be trusted. O’Brien is a low-rent Humphrey Bogart. Lancaster is dreamy, dense and doomed. Ava Gardner, in her first major movie, doesn’t do much more than exist. She hardly needs to. Materializing some 40 minutes into the movie in a backless black satin number, she turns from the hubbub of some dubious soiree to face the camera head-on; it’s clear from Lancaster’s dumbstruck gaze that he has met his Circe.

Opening scene

The Killers begins on a gloomy night in the suburban town of Brentwood. Two mysterious strangers walk into a local diner about five minutes before dinnertime to make inquiries on the whereabouts of a man named Pete Lund, whom locals call The Swede. The two men are hired assassins sent to kill The Swede, and, after they accomplish their mission with surprising ease, the unlucky victim is mostly forgotten until dogged insurance investigator Jim Reardon arrives on the scene. He is determined to find out the motive for The Swede's murder who once stopped him from committing suicide), and he begins investigating The Swede's past despite the protests of his boss. Reardon soon uncovers quite a bit of information including The Swede's tortured love affair with the glamorous singer Kitty Collins.

In my opinion, the opening scene of The Killers is perhaps the best in all of noir. The “Killers” uses brilliant opening scenes to dramatize the complete Hemingway story almost verbatim, with the hit men terrorizing the diner, and the Swede awaiting death. The rest is largely invented back story, as the movie veers into the land of noir with a hard-bitten insurance investigator researching the murdered man’s life to solve the mystery of his fatalism.

Like many artistically ambitious Hollywood movies of the 1940s, “The Killers” is clearly influenced by “Citizen Kane” — not just in its Expressionistic lighting, showy camera angles, carefully contrived mirror shots and percussive montage but also in its flashback structure. Its dramatic personae, however, are pure pulp.

Final scene

In the end, the peppy amorality of O’Brien’s investigation is mocked when his superior points out that all he’s accomplished is to prevent premiums from going up “one-tenth of a cent.” A moment before, on a grand staircase littered with the femme fatale’s final victims, Lieutenant Lubinsky, has barked at Gardner, asserting noir’s true stakes: “Don’t ask a dying man to lie his soul into hell!”

Important scenes