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The Killing [1956]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Among Stanley Kubrick's early film output The Killing stands out as the most lastingly influential: Quentin Tarantino credits the film as a huge inspiration for Reservoir Dogs and just about any movie or TV show that plays around with its own internal chronology owes the same debt. This sort of convoluted crime caper had really kicked off with John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. From then on, nouveau noir scripts kept trying to find new ways of telling very similar stories. Here the novel Clean Break is adapted for the screen in a jigsaw-puzzle structure that caught Kubrick's eye. With a dry narration we're introduced to the key players in a racetrack heist as it's being planned, but the story bounces back and forth between what happens to each of them during and before the big event. All of this keeps the audience guessing as to exactly how it will go wrong, while the downbeat telling, the unsympathetic characters and the excessively dramatic score clearly foretell that it will go wrong from the start. The denouement is comically daft no matter how many times you see it.

On the DVD: The Killing is a no-frills DVD transfer, in 4:3 ratio and with its original mono soundtrack. Criminally, just one trailer is all that's been dug up as an extra. --Paul Tonks


Bet on Film Noir
Review date: 2008-02-27 Rating: 10 out of 10

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.


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Reviews


Kubrick makes a real killing
Review date: 2007-11-23 Rating: 8 out of 10

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.

Kubrick's wonderful early noir classic
Review date: 2007-10-29 Rating: 8 out of 10

During a span of 46 years, Stanley Kubrick made only 13 feature films, from "Fear and Desire (1953)" to "Eyes Wide Shut (1999)". Although each has its own charm and unique taste and style, none looks much like the other in terms of genre and theme. "The Killing" represents Kubrick's entrance into the dark shadowy world of film noir. He was the master of exploring the dusky side of human nature in his pictures, focusing on crime, deceit, betrayal and morality. So, film noir & Kubrick: what a perfect fit.

The term "killing" refers to an elaborate heist of a race track. The robbery is masterminded by ex-Alcatraz inmate Johnny Clay, who rounds up a motley assortment of crooks, most of whom are small-timers as well as insiders in the race track lounge. Clay and his trusted accomplices have different stories and motives. We know a lot about them because the movie has an unusually convulted narrative structure, which was ahead of its time albeit outdated today. Flipping back and forth in time, he introduces a character, takes him a certain way where each gets a chance to tell his version of the story. Such kind of flashbacks and flashforwards are used in heist sequence, reflecting the various aspects of the robbery in different space and time.

That non-linear storytelling works well with Kubrick's deft directorial touch, but when the film was first released in 1956, United Artists dumped it on the grounds that it was too weird for average viewer and nobody would sit through that. Then Kubrick decided to re-edit the film. After watching new version he absolutely hated it, and put it back the way first edited it. It was his very first triumph to gain absolute control over his work.

Overall, "The Killing" is a perfect classic film noir, depicting man's foibles of greed and betrayal devastatingly real. Its importance not only comes from its influence on modern day noirs, such as Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown", but also it manifests what Kubrick was capable of doing with a shoestring budget of $320,000, even at an age of 27.

A thrilling start to a truly great body of work
Review date: 2007-09-08 Rating: 8 out of 10

Kubrick's first studio movie and first collaboration with producer James B. Harris is this cheeky, witty, lively story about grand theft at a horse racing track. This is also where began Kubrick's marriage with solid literary sources for each of his movies.

Sterling Hayden is ideal as the mumbling, swaggering Johnny Clay, who puts together a crack team to carry out the meticulously-planned heist. 'Crack team' is perhaps a misnomer - they're really no more than a handful of endearing swindlers; their coercion techniques do not extend beyond a couple of sharp back-handers. Clay is cocksure and quick-witted, almost to the point of self-parody; it makes his final line even more caustic.

Kubrick and original novelist Jim Thompson's script simply crackles, not least when flimsy George (Elisha Cook Jr) and femme-fatale Sherry (Marie Windsor) share the screen. Their dialogue is clever, witty, ludicrous even, and most of all rollicking good fun. Other characters bring texture to the tapestry: Art Gilmore plays an amusingly idiosyncratic narrator; we expect to see Kola Kwariani's affable bruiser eating a whole cooked chicken like George 'The Animal' Steele's Tor Johnson in Ed Wood; while Timothy Carey's vile sharpshooting psycho Nikki is fascinating viewing. (Carey would go on to play a very different role in Kubrick's next film, Paths of Glory.)

It's no surprise that Tarantino cites this movie as inspiration: the hopping narrative is a technique he used in Reservoir Dogs, while Jackie Brown made similar use of the heist scenes' multi-viewpoint setups. Testament indeed when you consider that in 1957 Kubrick was only just beginning his odyssey...

Kubrick's Unsung Masterpiece
Review date: 2006-09-16 Rating: 8 out of 10

Reading the list of Stanley Kubrick's directorial efforts is more like reading "what's what" of movie masterpieces; however "The Killing" is one of his movies that is often overlooked. This doesn't mean this is a bad movie, with so many fantastic movies to his name it's inevitable that a couple would be overshadowed and forgotten about, this just happens to be one of them. It also happens to be one of Kubrick's first times in the directors chair.

The movie begins at a racetrack; our no-nonsense narrator begins describing the art of betting on horses, just before introducing his intentions to the audience; robbing the racetrack during the most important race of the year. One by one those involved are introduced, while running parallel with discovering exactly how the heist will be carried out. Then sticking with each character individually we witness each one carrying out their side of the heist, the scripts jumps between characters, and back in forth in time to show what happens to each of them during the preparations for the heist, before we witness the heist itself from all possible points of view. This being Kubrick we know he will do something different with this crime caper - The Killing marks the birth of possibly the first true non-linear storyline. It's this unique (at that time) storytelling style that makes this movie so memorable but just another movie on the list of Kubrick's classics.

Surprisingly the two dimensional characters do not let the script down in the way you'd think it would, in time two dimensional characters have become synonymous with the Noir tradition, keeping us distant from the dark, criminal characters. As previously said, Kubrick is possibly the most versatile director of all time, and almost certainly has had many more hits than misses; this movie certainly deserves to be up there with his greatest. Quentin Tarantino has cited this as one of his greatest influence to write his own masterpiece Reservoir Dogs, so this movie must have something going for it.

One negative point is the transfer, keeping the no-frills 4.3 ratio it was filmed in, while also just having the original mono soundtrack. I should also point out that this movie is black and white; but since when did that matter? The special features are also a let down; one measly trailer is all we get, but then again, as long as you get the movie that's all that matters!

All being said, this is still one the genres greatest examples with a blend of dark humour, dark characters and almost unbearable tension as we become totally immersed in the heist itself, wondering if they are going to succeed. Kubrick fans will love it, crime fans will love it, noir fans will love, fans of thrillers of love what; what's there not to like?

Sam

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Jay C. Flippen
Coleen Gray
Elisha Cook Jr.
Sterling Hayden
Vince Edwards

Creators:
Sterling Hayden (Primary Contributor)
Coleen Gray (Primary Contributor)
Lucien Ballard (Cinematographer)
Stanley Kubrick (Writer)
Betty Steinberg (Editor)
Alexander Singer (Producer)
James B. Harris (Producer)
Jim Thompson (Writer)
Lionel White (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: MGM Entertainment
Manufacturer: MGM Entertainment
EAN: 5050070008180
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Black & White, Dubbed, Full Screen, PAL,
Release date: 2002-07-15
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 80 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1956-06-06
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: Italian (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Dubbed)
Language: German (Dubbed)
Language: Italian (Dubbed)
Language: Spanish (Dubbed)

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