1946 Directed by Robert Siodmak
Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.
Burt Lancaster Ava Gardner Edmond O'Brien Albert Dekker Sam Levene Vince Barnett Virginia Christine Jack Lambert Charles D. Brown Donald MacBride Charles McGraw William Conrad Jeff Corey Gino Corrado Frank McLure Howard Freeman Charles Middleton Queenie Smith Jack Cheatham William Ruhl Ernie Adams George Anderson Sam Ash Frank Baker Oliver Cross Sam Harris Jack Lomas Jack Tornek John Sheehan Show All…
Die Killer, Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, De doders, Rächer der Unterwelt, Les tueurs, Oi dolofonoi, Los asesinos
Robert Siodmak’s THE KILLERS is undeniably a classic film noir, and rightly regarded as one of the genre's best. Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway actually credited the film for being “the only good picture ever made of a story of mine”.
Delightfully engaging to watch. It's a masterful exercise in non-linear storytelling, filled with compelling characters. The suspenseful bravura of the opening sequence grabs you by the throat. The cinematography by Woody Bredell is absolutely stunning. It stars Burt Lancaster in his film debut, and Ava Gardner is an absolute classic femme fatale.
87/100
Hadn't previously thought of Siodmak as much of a stylist beyond the basic noir conventions he helped establish, but this is nearly as formally dazzling as Kane (which it's clearly striving to emulate), albeit in a less flashy way. Wish I had a copy handy so I could revisit and describe some of the shots that knocked me on my ass—I can't quite recall, for example, whether it's camera movement or blocking (or both) that suddenly places Ava Gardner in the foreground of this moment as she begins to sing her number, upstaging an already tense interaction between Lancaster and his girl, but it demonstrates an understanding of cinematic space that makes widescreen seem like a grotesque affectation (and…
Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner star in Robert Siodmak’s noir about an insurance agent who inadvertently unravels a web of secrets while looking into the murder of an ex-boxer.
Using Ernest Hemingway’s short story as the starting point, Siodmak and co push the source material into new directions for a blistering tale of double cross and deception; starting near the very end and reverse engineering from there, it takes an unusual approach to the narrative that really pays off in the long run, weaving a series of snippets from different accounts that start to intersect and enrich one another while evidence (and the truth of what happened to the ill-fated victim) begins to build up.
The actual story is directly…
Inspired by a short story by Ernest Hemingway, The Killers is a ballad of dilated and threatening shadows, which combines expressionist aesthetics with Hopper's paintings. Night and darkness dominate the entire film which opens onto a highway shrouded in darkness, with the killers ready to strike. Although warned of their arrival, in a dark hotel room a man awaits death without trying to escape, simply meeting his fate. Like Citizen Kane, the development of the plot consists of a series of flashbacks, each of which shows the point of view of the different characters involved in the story. The shadows and flashes of light create a sense of inevitability and claustrophobia that extends to individual shots, giving the impression that…
“If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” — Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway employed this so-called iceberg theory of omission leaving out most of the action in his short stories featuring alter-ego Nick Adams, from which “The Killers” is taken.
Siodmak films Hemingway’s eleven-page story virtually intact in the opening sequence: A couple of nighthawks appear from the shadows, fan out and enter a clean, well-lighted…
Film #27 of Project 40
”Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into Hell.”
Most noirs center around a mystery and it is the attempts of main characters to find the truth – or sometimes to desperately hide it – that defines the actions and reactions which will ultimately rearrange the film’s universe and rewrite the relationships between various individuals involved in the plot. Robert Siodmak’s The Killers - which is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway – follows the same rule but here there is one big difference that makes this quite unique among other noirs of 40s. The film uses multiple flashbacks and by gathering little pieces of information/truth from various people it follows…
Sometimes all it takes is one look for it all to come crashing down.
Enter frame. We see a bed, engulfed in the dark of night. On it, lies the blackened shadow of one man, silent and solitary. A door cracks open to illuminate the haze, but still his face remains eclipsed. Buried under the midnight glow as he is buried deep in his own thoughts. Yet they are as clear as day. We, just as he, recognise his days are numbered. Together, we have accepted his demise as fate. And so marks the beginning and end; as an opening scene of dazzling fortitude comes to close, we too are introduced to one Burt Lancaster for the very first time.…
“Stop listening to them golden harps, Swede. They can land you in a lot of trouble.”
Less a story about a tragic, pussy-whipped Swede, and more about the dogged pursuit of a paltry payout by a maniacal insurance investigator (who knows how to use a gun). A missed opportunity by setting this in Philadelphia instead of Minnesota, because we’ve got a million Ole Anderson’s up here. On the subject of names, clearly, one should never, ever, under any circumstances, trust a dame named “Kitty.”
I think this movie's reputation does it a disservice, or at least it did with me. My expectations were so high that, in retrospect, disappointment was almost inevitable, and I really didn't emotionally connect with the story or anyone in it. (Somehow, this keeps happening with Robert Siodmak noirs that star Burt Lancaster.)
Here's some stuff that stuck in my head.
•When Kitty (Ava Gardner) shrugs and laughs about using the Swede and then leaving him, frankly revealing — embracing — her monstrousness, and Reardon's (Edmond O'Brien, who is fantastic) completely honest immediate response is "I'd like to have known the old Kitty Collins." She gives him this quick sly, assessing look and everything shifts — it's like Jim and…
