Directed by: Robert
Siodmak.
The Killers (1964)
Directed by: Don
Siegel.
There’s no real point in denying that the opening of Richard Siodmak’s classic noir The Killers (1946) is better than the rest of the movie – and it’s also easy to figure out why. The opening scene, in which two hired killers enter a small town lunch counter, try to order off the dinner menu, even though it’s not quite 6 o’clock yet, then proceed to tell the counterman that they are here to kill the Swede – and they hear he comes in every night at 6 for dinner. They intimidate the counterman, tie up the cook and the only other customer in the place, before leaving – correctly figuring the Swede isn’t coming that day. The other customer, Nick Adams, then goes to the Swede to tell him that there are men there to kill him – and the Swede doesn’t react, doesn’t try to run away, he simply accepts his fate. We don’t actually see the killing itself – but we know it has happened, and Adams determines he is going to leave this small town behind – no one much cares about what happened. That opening – which maybe runs 15 minutes or so is pretty much the exact Ernest Hemingway short story that the film is adapting. It then spends roughly 90 minutes answering the question of why – what n happened to bring the Swede to that point – that Hemingway never answered. The film is terrific all the way through – those last 90 minutes borrows Citizen Kane’s structure – as an insurance investigator, Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) pieces together what happened by interviewing people who knew the Swede (Burt Lancaster, in his first screen role) – and we see it play out in flashback – a classic noir structure complete with a femme fatale (Ava Gardner), a heist and double crosses. But as great as those 90 minutes are, the opening 15 represent one of the greatest scene in film history.
When Don Siegel remade The Killers in 1964, he pretty much chucks the whole thing out – gone is Hemingway’s great opening sequence, but also gone is practically everything else. This time, there is no insurance investigator – it’s the hitmen themselves – Charlie Storm (Lee Marvin) and his younger partner Lee (Clu Gulager) who do the investigating. They surmise, much like O’Brien did in the original, that it is odd that they were hired to kill someone who apparently was involved in a robbery and made off with all the cash, and not try and get the cash back. In the words of Lee Marvin here – “the only people who don’t miss a million dollars are people who have a million dollars”. Siodmak’s film is a classic – one of the best noirs of its kind. Siegel’s film has become legendary in its own way – it prefigures the type of roles that would make Lee Marvin an icon, it inspired, and anticipates, Quentin Tarantino and is the last film ever made by future President Ronald Reagan – his first playing the villain, and shows that perhaps that he missed his calling as an actor (he is very convincing as the heavy”. Both are films that are products of their time and place – and in that they are fascinating.
The 1946 The Killers was made at the height of classic film noir. Once that opening is over, it pretty much falls into the familiar arch of noir – albeit with the Citizen Kane structure which makes it slightly more ambitious. Lancaster, a hunk of man, leading with his chin, is perfect here as the foil – a boxer whose career ends, and then gets sucked into a criminal life by a femme fatale – beautifully played by Ava Gardner. He tries to get out of that life – to live a small town life as a gas station attendant, but is recognized and knows he’s doomed (prefiguring Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past the following year – an even better noir). You cannot escape the sins of the past.
Siegel’s 1964 The Killers is a different sort of film – it started out as supposedly being made as TV movie – although the murderers row of talent – Marvin, Reagan, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson – make that odd, that turned into a theatrical movie mainly because it ended up too violent. The opening scene here is Marvin and Gulager walking into a school for the blind (the extras actually being blind) where Johnny North (Cassavetes) is a teacher, and gunning him down – which may have been enough right there. The infamous slap Reagan gives Dickinson – so casual, so sudden, so shocking – also didn’t help much.This time though the lyrics may be the same, but the music is different. Johnny North isn’t a boxer, but a race car driver. Once again though, he falls head over heels for a woman – Dickinson’s Sheila Farr – and ends up ruining his career, and being drawn into a robbery – where apparently he betrayed his cohorts, but it may not be that simple. The 1946 The Killers already didn’t have much use for the police – it is telling that it is an insurance investigator (perhaps a nod to Double Indemnity) not the cops who investigate in 1946 – the cops even say they don’t much care – they didn’t know the Swede well, he only arrived a year ago, the killers came and went, and there’s no danger to anyone else in town – so let the State Police handle it. Even that is thrown out though in the 1964 version – the killers themselves become the investigators. You can see why Tarantino loved the killers played by Marvin and Gulager so much that he copied their outfits for Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. They have a strange banter between them – not the chilling cold bloodedness of the killers from 1946 – but a casualness that is also disturbing. Siegel highlights the differences between them in their banter. Marvin would play this type of role to perfection later on – and it’s close to it here as well. Dickinson’s role here is underwritten – she is a femme fatale in some respects, but not really – she’s more a pawn than Gardner was – powerless, instead of in control. Cassavetes, who was a great actor, although perhaps not here, sneers his way through this role – he isn’t the innocent stooge Lancaster played, but far more cynical. Reagan really is quite good here as the villain – not because he twirls a mustache, but more in the casual, corporate boringness his performance – this is true evil, a nice suit in a nice office, who seems like a man who would sell you insurance.
It’s undeniable that the 1964 film was made on the cheap – Siegel was still establishing himself, and after all, it was supposed to go to TV. And yet, the sets, which looks makeshift and disposable, somehow add to the film. The film is bright and in color – leaving behind the masterful use of shadows and grey of the black and white original. It’s a cynical movie – it ends with pretty much everyone dead – and perhaps shows the way towards the future of American filmmaking in the later 1960s and 1970s – of cynicism, and violence without purpose.
All of that perhaps make Siegel’s film sound like a masterpiece – but it really isn’t. There are lumps and bumps throughout the film – far more than the original – and as an overall film, it’s nowhere near as good. Yet, it’s impossible to deny its historical importance – it’s place in cinema history. I’ve seen both films before – and liked both of them more this time. The make a fascinating double bill – not just because both films are good to great – but for what it meant about the very different circumstances, and eras, in which they were made.
Anthony Veller was not the only writer of the 1946 version. John Huston and Richard Brooks also worked on the screenplay. Huston didn't take credit because it was while he was doing his military service, and also because it was a Universal picture and he was under contract to Warner Bros.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough - for the credits section at the top, I usually stick to the "official" credits which just has Veller. But I could have mentioned the two great filmmakers who contributed to the screenplay as well.
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