The Killers

(1946) ****

I mentioned in my first review (for Touch of Evil) that I was going to use this month to go through a stack of film noir I've been putting off. So it's time to get to some of that moody goodness.

This "most suspenseful film of all time," as the dvd box claims, is of course nothing like that at all. But what it is, is a stylish and smart mystery with an effective flashback structure and a decent twist ending. And it's all gorgeously shot in shadowy black/whites. It's also Burt Lancaster's film debut, and Ava Gardner's first real starring role.


The closest it gets to horror is in a brilliantly tense opening sequence which is essentially a word for word filming of a Hemingway short story. The scene is maybe 10 minutes, and the dry, terse dialogue would be recognizable to even non-lit buffs.

Two brooding strangers enter a mostly empty diner and basically take the one patron (Nick Adams of "the Nick Adams stories" fame!), the owner, and the cook, hostage while they wait to kill "the Swede," in what is clearly some sort of mob hit. These guys are mean and mocking in a way that you just didn't see in most movies in the 30s and 40s, and you get a sense of why these film noir flicks seemed so fresh and new to the French audiences when the Vichy government finally fell.

The Swede turns out to be Lancaster, a washed up boxer, now drifter. From the story, I've always assumed the hit to be about some sort of thrown fight gone awry. The story ends with the Swede waiting in his flophouse bed, not caring that he's about to be shot.

The bulk of the movie, then, is telling the back story (via flashback) on who this boxer is, how he got here, and why the goons wanted him dead. And while the script doesn't really match up to the early Hemingway section, the plot itself is clever and twisting. We follow an insurance claims investigator as he tries to piece together who this murdered guy is. I like this choice--having an insurance guy playing the Bogie character--and it leads up to a great line at the end about all his hard work adding up to a 1/10th of a cent off next year's premiums.

Ava Gardner is stunning as the femme fatale from Lancaster's past, Kitty Collins, and you totally buy it when Lancaster's character completely forgets about his cute girlfriend (standing beside him) the moment his eyes fall on Gardner. Of course this leads to the standard noirish love triangle, deception, and double-crossing, out of which we get great lines like: "There's nothing I hate more than a double-crossing dame!" There's also lots of fun noir character names like Jake the Rake, Blinky, Dum-Dum, and Packy. Gotta love street-toughs of the 30s and their colorful nicknames.

Anyway, highly recommended when you're in the mood for a legit old school classic that delivers. Probably not what you're looking for during Horrorthon, but keep it in mind the rest of the year.