The Killing
With most of Stanley Kubrick’s thirteen feature films now available on Blu-ray, Arrow are plugging the last gap in the list by releasing two of his earliest, The Killing, a challenging heist movie from 1956 accompanied by the more conventional film noir Killer’s Kiss from 1955. Both have been transferred from new high definition masters struck by MGM and the picture and sound quality is outstanding on both.
The Killing was the film which truly kick-started Kubrick’s career as one of the most important cinema auteurs of the 20th century. Although not particularly successful on first release it gave him the opportunity to direct Paths of Glory (1957) and from that point on it was an upward trajectory through Spartacus (1960) and Lolita (1962) to the trio of films which spanned a decade and became synonymous with cinematic excellence: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971).
In The Killing Kubrick takes the classic elements of both film noir and the heist genre, a hard-boiled omniscient voiceover, unsympathetic characters and a duplicitous femme fatale, and subverts them through his highly individual lens. Based on Clean Break by prolific crime novelist Lionel White, the cynical script was written by Kubrick with the dialogue provided by the legendary Jim Thompson whose own work includes the novels The Killer Inside Me (1952), After Dark, My Sweet (1955), The Kill-Off (1957) and The Grifters (1963), all of them the subject of major film adaptations in recent years.
The story is deceptively straightforward, as ex-convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) recruits a motley band of associates to act as his accomplices in his attempt to steal two million dollars from a race track, but inevitably, things do not go according to plan. This was the first of Kubrick’s films to foreground one of his recurring motifs, that of the carefully-constructed plan falling apart due to human frailty or chance events.
Although the plotting conforms to a standard noir formula, Kubrick’s technique is verging on avant-garde, employing a non-linear narrative with the out of sequence scenes bound together by the portentous voiceover. He also uses a tracking camera in ways which hadn’t been previously been used in the genre before, bringing a dynamism normally largely absent from a genre which was usually presented in a standardised if sometimes stylish format.
Leading the cast as Clay, Sterling Hayden was a bona fide star having been featured in John Ford’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) before playing the eponymous Johnny Guitar opposite Joan Crawford in 1954, a performance he was unhappy with but which has now become possibly his best-known role in a long and distinguished career which later reunited him with Kubrick for Dr. Strangelove and also encompassed Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973).
A strong and relaxed screen presence, Hayden easily commands every scene he appears in, and he is supported by a roster of largely-unknown but brilliantly cast character actors of whom only one, Marie Windsor as the obligatory femme fatale Sherry Peatty, duplicitous and unfaithful wife of the bookie George (Elisha Cook Jr), comes close to stealing the film from him.
Although poorly-received on first release, The Killing is now viewed as a classic and almost six decades after release remains as entertaining for general film viewers as it is for Kubrick aficionados and dedicated cinephiles.
Curiously listed as an extra rather than as part of the double-bill which it is in effect, though possibly in recognition of its brief sixty seven minute running time, Killer’s Kiss was only Kubrick’s second feature following a series of documentary shorts and 1953’s Fear and Desire, a low budget war film with which the perfectionist director was never satisfied.
Although ostensibly a noir love story set amongst New York’s underclasses, Killer’s Kiss reflects Kubrick’s early career as a photojournalist. Written by Kubrick and playwright Howard Sackler, the plot is very simple, as washed-up boxer Davey (one of only two feature roles of television actor Jamie Smith) falls in love with his neighbour Gloria (Irene Kane, who like Smith had appeared in Naked City) who works as a hostess in a seedy dance hall. After his last bout proves disastrous, Davey invites Gloria to join him as he returns to the family farm upstate, but he is already involved with her sleazy boss (prolific actor Frank Silvera, best remembered for a recurring role on The High Chaparral) who has no intention of letting her go.
As with other Kubrick films the plot, such as it is, is merely a convenient frame on which to hang arresting visuals, and it is obvious from the opening moments that Kubrick is more interested in telling stories with pictures rather than through the minimal dialogue, with Jamie’s rural background both introduced and beautifully evoked by a few simple photographs he keeps in the frame of a mirror in his apartment.
Looking over the pictures as he is preparing for his last make-or-break bout in the ring, they say far more about the character than a few lines of dialogue ever could while the silence says everything about the man.
As with most B-movies, the acting is not always the best but there is a level of verisimilitude which is fresh and dynamic, a seemingly oxymoronic mixture of attention to mundane detail amongst a grander more stylised canvas would become one of Kubrick’s trademarks as a director. Although Killer’s Kiss is hardly a classic, there is much in it to enjoy and Kubrick’s considerable talent is already evident in the raw. Those familiar with his later work will see many stylistic trademarks in embryonic form including a dream sequence precursor to the journey through the stargate in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Arrow has released the disc with some interesting special features, chief amongst them a newly-commissioned twenty five minute interview with French critic Michel Ciment who discusses Kubrick’s films of the fifties. Apparently Kubrick’s knowledge of photography was encyclopaedic and usually superior to any of his cinematographers which led to some interesting clashes. A second, shorter interview with British director-of-the-moment Ben Wheatley is more of a personal appreciation but is no less entertaining and informative. Lastly, the trio of interviews is rounded off with a somewhat eccentric 1970s archive interview with a bare-chested Sterling Hayden taken from the vaults of French television, and trailers for both films complete the extras.
The Killing is available now on Blu-ray from Arrow Films
