The Killers

The Killers
theatrical poster
Directed by	Robert Siodmak
Produced by	Mark Hellinger
Written by	Story: Ernest Hemingway Screenplay: Anthony Veiller Richard Brooks Uncredited: John Huston
Starring	Burt Lancaster Ava Gardner Edmond O'Brien Sam Levene
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	Elwood Bredell
Editing by	Arthur Hilton
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	August 28 1946
Running time	103 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Killers is a 1946 American film noir. It is based in part on the short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. The film was directed by Robert Siodmak and features Burt Lancaster in his screen debut, as well as Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, and Sam Levene.^[1] An uncredited John Huston co-wrote the screenplay.

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".

Plot

Two hit men arrive at a small-town diner, assigned to find and kill a man, Ole Anderson, aka "the Swede" (Lancaster). They track him to a boarding house where, resigned to his fate, he puts up no struggle.

The Swede had life insurance, so Investigator Jim Reardon (O'Brien) is assigned to look into the murder for his company. Interviewing people from his past, Reardon develops a theory that The Swede's murder stemmed from an unsolved payroll robbery of years earlier masterminded by Colfax (Albert Dekker) and involving Kitty Collins (Gardner), a mysterious woman The Swede loved.

Working with a police detective (Levene) who was a boyhood friend of the dead man, Reardon sets a plan in motion to trap the hired killers and the man who hired them.

Background

Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster

The first 20 minutes of the film, showing the arrival of the two contract killers, and the murder of "Swede" Anderson, is a close adaptation of Hemingway's short story. The rest of the film, showing Reardon's investigation of the murder, is wholly original. According to Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker, The Killers "was the first film from any of his works that Ernest could genuinely admire."^[2]

Producer Mark Hellinger paid $36,750 for the screen rights to Hemingway's story, his first independent production. The screenplay was written by John Huston, uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros., and Richard Brooks.^[3]

Lancaster wasn't his first pick for the part of "the Swede," but Warner Brothers wouldn't lend out actor Wayne Morris for the film. Other actors considered for the part include: Van Heflin, Jon Hall, Sonny Tufts, and Edmund O'Brien, who was instead cast in the role of the insurance investigator. In the role of the femme fatale, Kitty Collins, Hellinger cast Gardner, who had up to then appeared virtually unnoticed in a string of minor films.

The opening chords of Miklós Rózsa's theme music was later reused for the Dragnet television series.

The Killers is used as an example of noir cinematography in the documentary Visions of Light (1992).^[4]

The film's appeal derives from breaking the traditional narrative structure by using a number of flashbacks. ^[5]

Cast

• Burt Lancaster as "Swede" Andersen
• Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins
• Edmond O'Brien as Jim Reardon
• Albert Dekker as Big Jim Colfax
• Sam Levene as Lt. Sam Lubinsky
• Vince Barnett as Charleston
• Virginia Christine as Lilly Harmon Lubinsky
• Charles D. Brown as Packy Robinson
• Jack Lambert as "Dum-Dum" Clarke
• Donald MacBride as R.S. Kenyon
• Charles McGraw as Al
• William Conrad as Max
• Phil Brown as Nick Adams
• Mary Ellen Daugherty as Queenie Smith
• Jeff Corey as "Blinky" Franklin
• Harry Hayden as George
• Bill Walker as Sam

Critical reception

Iconic image of "Swede" Andersen before his murder.

When the film was first released, Bosley Crowther gave it a positive review and lauded the acting. He wrote, "[In] a film called The Killers, which was the title of the Hemingway piece, Mark Hellinger and Anthony Veiller are filling out the plot. That is, they are cleverly explaining, through a flashback reconstruction of the life of that man who lay sweating in his bedroom, why the gunmen were after him. And although it may not be precisely what Hemingway had in mind, it makes a taut and absorbing explanation...[w]ith Robert Siodmak's restrained direction, a new actor, Burt Lancaster, gives a lanky and wistful imitation of a nice guy who's wooed to his ruin. And Ava Gardner is sultry and sardonic as the lady who crosses him up. Edmond O'Brien plays the shrewd investigator in the usual cool and clipped detective style, Sam Levene is very good as a policeman and Albert Dekker makes a thoroughly nasty thug. Several other characters are sharply and colorfully played. The tempo is slow and metronomic, which makes for less excitement than suspense."^[6]

In a review of the DVD release, Scott Tobias, while critical of the screenplay, described the drama's noir style, writing, "Lifted note-for-note from the Hemingway story, the classic opening scene of Siodmak's film sings with the high tension, sharp dialogue, and grim humor that's conspicuously absent from the rest of Anthony Veiller's mediocre screenplay. Taking a page out of the Double Indemnity playbook, Veiller has insurance adjuster Edmond O'Brien investigate after the murder takes place, but it's never really clear why he's so passionate about the case. A lean block of muscles and little else, Burt Lancaster stars as the hapless victim, an ex-boxer who was unwittingly roped into the criminal underworld and the even more dangerous gaze of Ava Gardner, a memorably sultry and duplicitous femme fatale. The story plays strictly by the crime-genre rules, including a $250,000 payroll caper, but Siodmak (Criss Cross, The Spiral Staircase), a director from the German Expressionist school, sustains a fatalistic tone with the atmospheric touches that define noir, favoring stark lighting effects that throw his post-war world into shadow."^[7]

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100 percent of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 29 reviews.^[8]

Adaptations

The Killers was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on the June 5, 1949 broadcast of Screen Director's Playhouse, starring Burt Lancaster, Shelly Winters and William Conrad.

In 1958, director Andrei Tarkovsky, then a film student, created a 19-minute short based on the story which is featured on the Criterion Collection DVD release.^[9]

The film was adapted in 1964 using the same title (see: The Killers), but an updated plot. It was directed by Don Siegel, and featured Lee Marvin and a villainous Ronald Reagan in his last motion picture. Siegel's film was deemed too violent for the small screen and was released theatrically, first in Europe, then years later in America.^[10]

Scenes from The Killers were used in the Steve Martin film noir spoof Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).^[11]

Awards / Honors

Wins

• Edgar Award: Edgar; from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture, Anthony Veiller (writer), Mark Hellinger (producer), and Robert Siodmak (director); 1947.

Nominations—1947 Academy Awards

• Best Director: Robert Siodmak.
• Best Film Editing: Arthur Hilton.
• Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture: Miklós Rózsa.
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Anthony Veiller.

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Killers (film)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Killers (1946 film)

• The Killers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Killers at Allmovie
• The Killers at the TCM Movie Database
• The Killers at Film Site by Tom Dirks
• The Killers essay at the Criterion Collection by Jonathan Lethem
• The Killers film clip at You Tube
• Literature on the Killers