Post by petrolino on Mar 31, 2018 22:50:03 GMT
The mystery thriller 'The Killers' is loosely based on the short story 'The Killers' (1927) by Ernest Hemingway. It depicts the sordid backstory behind the journey of a promising boxer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania nicknamed 'The Swede' (Burt Lancaster) who wound up in Brentwood, New Jersey awaiting the arrival of two hitmen hired to execute him. The pieces of the jigsaw are slowly put in place by Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien), an investigator hired to decipher who the recipient should be of a life insurance claim.
'The Killers' is a dark, robust thriller from director Robert Siodmak that oozes confidence and drips with style. The story introduces viewers to a gallery of rogues that Swede has surrounded himself with, coming in the shape of Albert Dekker as gambling gangster Big Jim Colfax, Ava Gardner as deceitful thief Kitty Collins, Vince Barnett as philosophical bandit Charleston, Jack Lambert as pot-stirring robber Dum-Dum Clarke and Jeff Corey as twitchy crook Blinky Franklin. Out of the gutter spills a pair of ruthless hitmen, Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad). Jim Reardon's only allies are Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) and Lily Harmon (Virginia Christine), a college graduate who once went with the Swede.
The opening to 'The Killers' is among the most influential in crime cinema history, inspiring sections of Terence Young's mafia expose 'The Valachi Papers' (1972), Arthur Marks' pursuit thriller 'Bonnie's Kids' (1972), Eric Red's hostage drama 'Cohen And Tate' (1988) and Quentin Tarantino's crime mosaic 'Pulp Fiction' (1994). Robert Siodmak paints with shadows and light, uses reflections wisely and submerges his characters in a glimmering world of enveloping darkness. The precise character blocking appears like a graphic novel come to life and you can marvel at all the small details. I like the shots of the Swede's hand during crunch moments and the supercool way in which Al pokes his revolver through a kitchen counter window. In lesser hands, a flashback structure can reduce tension and break up atmosphere, but Siodmak is too skilful within the genre to allow this to happen. Composer Miklos Rozsa's tense dramatic score includes some light, lyrical passages of folk-infused classicism which provides a nice counterpoint to Ernest Hemingway's muscular set-up, one that beckons mean men to pump each other up and pat each other down.
There's plenty of great set-pieces to enjoy in 'The Killers'. The central heist showing a quartet of armed robbers enter a payroll office is brilliantly executed using off-screen narration to make it feel like a newsreel. The climax in which multiple players launch a takedown at a mansion may make you think of Brian De Palma's 'Scarface' (1983), just as a hit job at a restaurant brings to mind a scene from Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather' (1972). I'd also like to mention the overall influence this picture seems to have had on the Coen Brothers' dialogue and writing, basing this observation upon their early crime films like 'Blood Simple' (1984), 'Raising Arizona' (1987) which borrows from two of the film's supporting characterisations for comic effect, and their complex gangster flick 'Miller's Crossing' (1990).
"Well there's one thing to be thankful for. He can sleep on consecrated ground."
'Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper
'Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper
'The Killers' is a dark, robust thriller from director Robert Siodmak that oozes confidence and drips with style. The story introduces viewers to a gallery of rogues that Swede has surrounded himself with, coming in the shape of Albert Dekker as gambling gangster Big Jim Colfax, Ava Gardner as deceitful thief Kitty Collins, Vince Barnett as philosophical bandit Charleston, Jack Lambert as pot-stirring robber Dum-Dum Clarke and Jeff Corey as twitchy crook Blinky Franklin. Out of the gutter spills a pair of ruthless hitmen, Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad). Jim Reardon's only allies are Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) and Lily Harmon (Virginia Christine), a college graduate who once went with the Swede.
"German-based director Robert Siodmak exerted a major influence on the evolution of American film noir. Born in 1900, Siodmak spent his childhood in Liepzig and Berlin. After a short career in banking and in magazines, he began working as an assistant director for a German company. In 1936, he managed to escape Nazi Germany for Paris and five years later arrived in Hollywood. In many of his films, through taut, hard-edged and moody direction, Siodmak explored the criminal or psychotic impulses of his characters. His most typical narratives portray a gloomy and cynical world, defined by fatalism, passion, obsession, and compulsion."
- Emanuel Levy, Cinema 24/7
"Looking to escape Paris for the United States, Robert Siodmak would claim to have been born in Memphis and subsequently taken by his parents to Germany. The New York Times, which profiled the director at the height of his success, called him “the only native-born American with a foreign accent in Hollywood.” German sources give Siodmak’s actual birthplace as Leipzig or Dresden. In any case, it was Dresden where he grew up and defied his wealthy father to find work in the movies."
- J. Hoberman, The New York Times
- Emanuel Levy, Cinema 24/7
"Looking to escape Paris for the United States, Robert Siodmak would claim to have been born in Memphis and subsequently taken by his parents to Germany. The New York Times, which profiled the director at the height of his success, called him “the only native-born American with a foreign accent in Hollywood.” German sources give Siodmak’s actual birthplace as Leipzig or Dresden. In any case, it was Dresden where he grew up and defied his wealthy father to find work in the movies."
- J. Hoberman, The New York Times
Burt Lancaster
'Hurricane' - Bob Dylan
'Hurricane' - Bob Dylan
The opening to 'The Killers' is among the most influential in crime cinema history, inspiring sections of Terence Young's mafia expose 'The Valachi Papers' (1972), Arthur Marks' pursuit thriller 'Bonnie's Kids' (1972), Eric Red's hostage drama 'Cohen And Tate' (1988) and Quentin Tarantino's crime mosaic 'Pulp Fiction' (1994). Robert Siodmak paints with shadows and light, uses reflections wisely and submerges his characters in a glimmering world of enveloping darkness. The precise character blocking appears like a graphic novel come to life and you can marvel at all the small details. I like the shots of the Swede's hand during crunch moments and the supercool way in which Al pokes his revolver through a kitchen counter window. In lesser hands, a flashback structure can reduce tension and break up atmosphere, but Siodmak is too skilful within the genre to allow this to happen. Composer Miklos Rozsa's tense dramatic score includes some light, lyrical passages of folk-infused classicism which provides a nice counterpoint to Ernest Hemingway's muscular set-up, one that beckons mean men to pump each other up and pat each other down.
"I will keep my adoration for the beginning of 'The Killers' brief and limited to a single paragraph. I will say that it challenges and even surpasses 'Kiss Me Deadly' in effectiveness. Robert Siodmak really comes out punching with that opening right cross to whichever “bright boy” you care to inflict bodily harm on. That first image is basically lifted by both Robert Aldrich and David Lynch in their own filmographies and put to extensive use. Focusing on a car barreling down a dark road with a behind-the-shoulder shot, we are quickly placed in the prototypical noir universe of a stylized and menacing Brentwood, New Jersey. Miklos Rozsa’s intense and rousing score sets up the mood perfectly, as Sodmak’s name on the screen can’t cover up the two figures stalking about in the background. Their initial destination is a service station that looks closed and empty. They instead walk across the street to Henry’s Diner which is open and accepting customers. Unfortunately, these guys are not really looking for “roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes.” What they really want is the whereabouts of The Swede (Burt Lancaster) and to plug him with enough holes that he looks like one of those old cartoon characters that takes a drink and begins to spout water all over his body. The tension elevates to almost unbearable proportions as the duo takes the whole eatery hostage and we wonder what these assassins will do next."
- Sam Juliano, Wonders In The Dark
"At the centre of 'The Killers', in his first screen appearance, is Burt Lancaster as the Swede, a vulnerable, doomed loser of the sort he was often to play, with Ava Gardner in her first starring role as the alluring, duplicitous Kitty. Their chemistry is incendiary, and virtually everything round them is first-rate – Woody Bredell’s high contrast, low key black-and-white photography, a supporting cast led by Albert Dekker, Edmond O’Brien and Sam Levine, and music by the prolific Miklós Rózsa, who also composed the score for the Siodmak-Lancaster noir masterpiece 'Criss Cross' (1949)."
- Philip French, The Guardian
- Sam Juliano, Wonders In The Dark
"At the centre of 'The Killers', in his first screen appearance, is Burt Lancaster as the Swede, a vulnerable, doomed loser of the sort he was often to play, with Ava Gardner in her first starring role as the alluring, duplicitous Kitty. Their chemistry is incendiary, and virtually everything round them is first-rate – Woody Bredell’s high contrast, low key black-and-white photography, a supporting cast led by Albert Dekker, Edmond O’Brien and Sam Levine, and music by the prolific Miklós Rózsa, who also composed the score for the Siodmak-Lancaster noir masterpiece 'Criss Cross' (1949)."
- Philip French, The Guardian
Ava Gardner
'Like A Hurricane' - Kristin Hersh
'Like A Hurricane' - Kristin Hersh
There's plenty of great set-pieces to enjoy in 'The Killers'. The central heist showing a quartet of armed robbers enter a payroll office is brilliantly executed using off-screen narration to make it feel like a newsreel. The climax in which multiple players launch a takedown at a mansion may make you think of Brian De Palma's 'Scarface' (1983), just as a hit job at a restaurant brings to mind a scene from Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather' (1972). I'd also like to mention the overall influence this picture seems to have had on the Coen Brothers' dialogue and writing, basing this observation upon their early crime films like 'Blood Simple' (1984), 'Raising Arizona' (1987) which borrows from two of the film's supporting characterisations for comic effect, and their complex gangster flick 'Miller's Crossing' (1990).
"When the young German film director Robert Siodmak and his friends were “schlepping” a camera round Berlin, making their film People on Sunday (1930), none of them could have envisaged how little time they had left in Germany. Siodmak, whose career is celebrated this spring with a season at BFI Southbank, his brother Curt, his flatmate Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer and Fred Zinnemann were unknowns in their early twenties, beginning to make their way in the German film industry. The film itself, shot over several months of Sundays, is a paean to a carefree, youthful hedonism. How do its good-looking and very modern-seeming Berliner protagonists spend their Sundays? They head south to the lake and forests of Nikolassee; drink, picnic, swim, listen to music, flirt and have sex in the woods. There are no particular worries in their lives beyond the threat of boredom, mild hangovers, jealousy over lovers and the normal restrictions of the working week.
Flash forward a few years and the lives of the young film-makers, who were all Jewish, had been thrown into upheaval. None remained in Germany. Siodmak fled the country in 1933, just after the premiere of his film Burning Secret, an adaptation of a Stefan Zweig novel which Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels had recommended banning on the grounds of its “sick sultriness and airless muddle-headedness”.
- Geoffrey Macnab, 'Out Of The Shadows: How Robert Siodmak's Hollywood 'Hack Work' Is Being Re-Discovered'
"Dresden, the childhood home of Robert Siodmak, was once called “Florence on the Elbe.” It was renowned for its baroque architecture, churches, and museums, all built under the absolutist kings of Saxony. The carpet bombing of the city in 1945 by Britain’s Royal Air Force is still viewed as a war crime by many Germans. In 1933 its thriving Jewish community numbered more than 6,000. After the fall of Hitler, only a handful of those who had survived the Holocaust returned to Dresden, which was soon to come under Communist rule."
- Marc Svetov, 'Emigres And Noir'
Flash forward a few years and the lives of the young film-makers, who were all Jewish, had been thrown into upheaval. None remained in Germany. Siodmak fled the country in 1933, just after the premiere of his film Burning Secret, an adaptation of a Stefan Zweig novel which Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels had recommended banning on the grounds of its “sick sultriness and airless muddle-headedness”.
- Geoffrey Macnab, 'Out Of The Shadows: How Robert Siodmak's Hollywood 'Hack Work' Is Being Re-Discovered'
"Dresden, the childhood home of Robert Siodmak, was once called “Florence on the Elbe.” It was renowned for its baroque architecture, churches, and museums, all built under the absolutist kings of Saxony. The carpet bombing of the city in 1945 by Britain’s Royal Air Force is still viewed as a war crime by many Germans. In 1933 its thriving Jewish community numbered more than 6,000. After the fall of Hitler, only a handful of those who had survived the Holocaust returned to Dresden, which was soon to come under Communist rule."
- Marc Svetov, 'Emigres And Noir'
Edmond O'Brien
'Cortez The Killer' - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
If I watched 'The Killers' tomorrow something else would leap out at me. With this viewing, it was the devious way in which Kitty uses a mirror to manipulate a situation during a card game. In 2008, 'The Killers' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1956, director Andrei Tarkovsky made a student film based on Hemingway's story. Don Siegel's 'The Killers' (1964) is another successful adaptation. A new version is in the planning stages with a screenplay having been written by Andrew Kevin Walker, a regular collaborator of crime filmmaker David Fincher. 'Cortez The Killer' - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
