The Killing (1956)

Classic Early Noir From A Master

Stanley Kubrick's third film, 1956's The Killing is a small noir masterpiece. Starring Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay this film has been copied many times by many great directors including Quentin Tarantino.

The film follows the exploits of a small band of criminals as they attempt to pull off a race track robbery. This is perhaps the most tightly plotted film that I have seen in many years and the dialog, penned by Kubrick with the help of Jim Thompson is nearly perfect. The performances by the cast are spot on.

It must be remembered that this is classic Hollywood B-moviemaking but Kubrick's genius with non linear storytelling shines through like a diamond in the rough. While it may seem dated at times with its heavy voice over narration it is a film experience that should not be missed.

The low priced MGM disc is a bare bones affair that features a trailer. The picture is in full screen format (which was the correct shooting ratio) and the sound is mono but acceptable. Lucien Ballard's photography is stark and at times overlit but it suits this material perfectly.

This is a film that needs to be seen by any serious film student. June 18, 2008

a cool caper flick

Not directed, written, or edited like other crime films which makes it even more interesting. The Killing is a sharp and skillfully done crime film. Several plotlines involving different characters are successfully interwoven into one story about a racetrack robbery. The characters George, his gold digger wife Sherry, and Sherry's lover Val are great characters with a great plot. Sterling Hayden plays the ringleader and all of the performances are good. There's nothing really wrong with this film. The film gets complicated in a fascinating way and is well executed with a gripping surprise ending. The Killing is first-rate and unconventional storytelling to say the least. To divulge the specifics of the characters and plotlines would be unfair to somebody who hasn't seen it. April 18, 2008

Kubrick Owes An Apology to John Huston!

I am astounded at the extravagant praise that this movie receives. Yes, it WAS directed by Stanley Kubrick. But clearly, at this point in his career, Mr. Kubrick was not exactly a master of his craft. The voice-over narrative is really distracting,irritating and corny, even for those days. Also what really gets me is this movie a clear rip-off of the outstanding noir film, The Asphalt Jungle, which was made eight years earlier and also featured Sterling Hayden. Now THAT was (and still is) a great crime movie, the progenitor of all "caper" films and a movie very sadly ignored by most film buffs, especially the younger generation. Stanley Kubrick should have taken all the money he made from "The Killing" and sent it to John Huston, with a note of apology. Forget "The Killing." Buy "The Asphalt Jungle." You won't be sorry. April 3, 2008

Bet on Film Noir

One of Kubrick's early films, and the first to show the world that here was a film director who would never produce run of the mill movies. Its essentially a heist movie set a horse race track, but made in a film noir style complete with narration and a multitude of interesting characters, who are virtually all up to no good.

For the 1950's this is a highly original film. Events are not neccessarily seen chronologically, so we get to see an event and then get to see in detail how one of the major players affected the event. Think how Pulp Fiction played with time. Well this does it on a smaller scale but more often.

As films go this one is pretty much perfect. I was only going to give this 4 stars but when I tried to justify this I honestly couldn't think of anything wrong with it so ended up giving it 5. The cinematography, script and Kubrick's assured direction are all excellent.

The film could probably do with a digital remaster, there is one character - 'Maurice Oboukoff' - who I could really only a understand few words of when he spoke, but he had a strong accent and only spoke in one scene, so it didn't affect my enjoyment of the film.

Marvellous.
February 27, 2008

Kubrick makes a real killing

You can't help wondering if Sterling Hayden didn't get the feeling that he was just rehashing his biggest hit The Asphalt Jungle when he starred in heist movie The Killing six years later, but today Kubrick's shoestring production holds up much better than its big studio predecessor. Only three films into his career and Kubrick was already setting out his big theme - society's need to break individuals that threaten it into manageable cogs in the machine, aided in its task by their own character flaws. He even has Kola Kwariani spell it out in so many words: "You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else. The perfect mediocrity. No better, no worse. Individuality is a monster, and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable. You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They're admired and hero-worshipped, but there is always present underlying wish to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory."

The individual in question is Hayden's crook planning the biggest heist of the century with the help of a corrupt cop, a bartender and a racetrack cashier, bankrolled by Jay C. Flippen's moneyman, who clearly has a crush on him and goes straight to the bottle when he realises it's not mutual. The film's big gimmick at the time was the film backtracking to follow each member of the gang as they carry out their part in a vicious but ingenious and perfectly planned-to-the-second racetrack heist. But perfect plans, like computers or Marine recruits, have a tendency to break down due to a human error in the programme, and in this case the human error is Elisha Cook Jr., or more precisely his wife Marie Windsor in a double-crossing downmarket femme fatale role that would have been played by Gloria Graham in a bigger budgeted picture and who delivers a performance that seems the template for Joan Collins' entire career. Desperate to keep her even though she's cheating on him with Vince Edwards' punk (who in turn is cheating on her), he gabs a little too much about the plan...

Hayden gets probably the best role of his career, his fast-talking no-nonsense totally in control delivery giving the film an urgency even when it's just men sitting in dark rooms talking, and when he delivers his forlorn last line it's as if the man really has had all the humanity drained out of him. Yet good as he is, the standout in the cast is Elisha Cook Jr in what may well be the his very best performance as the "joke without a punchline" clerk, a man who loses control the more he tries to display it. There's some fine black and white camerawork from Lucien Ballard boasting alternating stark, almost reportage-style rough-and-ready shots with some strikingly controlled long tracking shots that Kubrick later revised into a visual trademark, and there are a few other pointers to Kubrick's future work as well - seen with hindsight, Hayden's clown mask looks remarkably Droog-like, while two of the doomed soldiers in Paths of Glory, Timothy Carey (a man who could look sleepily menacing even when stroking a puppy) and, briefly, Joseph Turkel (best remembered as the ghostly bartender in The Shining) turn up in supporting roles. The Dragnet-style narration can be excessive at times, but does help immensely in the heist finale as the narrative constantly doubles-back on itself and the film's timeframe, and there's some terrific dialogue courtesy of the great Jim Thompson ("You like money. You have a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart."). It's still tied to the crime-must-not-pay morality of its day, but it executes it with startling immediacy and a great "What's the difference?" ending.

The only extra is the original trailer. January 18, 2008

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