327 - The Killers, United States, 1946. Dir. Robert Siodmak.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

327 - The Killers, United States, 1946.  Dir. Robert Siodmak.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken our mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in us.

At thy right hand there is pleasure forevermore.

These are the words the Minister speaks over the body of Ole Anderson as he commits his body to the ground.  Earth to earth.  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.

Happy Thanksgiving.

On Sunday, January 1, of this year we began with our first Film Blog.  It featured an independent German feature made by young amateurs who went on to become some of the important filmmakers in world cinema history.

Click here.
www.realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/001-sunday-january-1-2017-people-on.html

The film was People On Sunday.  The director was Robert Siodmak.  He was 29 years old.  The day after its screening he was offered a job by the great German studio UFA.

Three years later he was working in France.

Seven years after that he was working for Paramount.

He would also work for Republic, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, RKO, and Warner Bros., but he would work most often, and here, at Universal.

Mark Hellinger was the theater critic-turned-producer who put this film together, based on one of Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams short stories.  He originally wanted the young, up-and-coming Don Siegel to direct it, but he could not afford what it would cost to borrow him from Warner Bros.  So he turned to Siodmak.  For our money, it worked out fortuitously.

The Killers is a quintessential film noir movie.  It is included in the original list of ten films that came to France in that fateful Summer of 1946, which Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton describe in their 1955 book, A Panorama of American Film Noir.  French film critic Nino Frank coined the term film noir that year, 1946.  Borde and Chaumeton canonized the list a few years later in their seminal book.

John Huston, the great writer-director, who made the earliest of the ten films named in their book, The Maltese Falcon (1941), wrote much of the screenplay for this film but had to remain uncredited, because he too was with Warner Bros.

The film received four Academy Award nominations: for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Music.

A car careens down a narrow highway in the dark of night.  Two head silhouettes appear in the front seat.  Strident music surges as the credits appear, the score of composer Miklos Rozsa.

A sign welcomes tourists, hoping they stay.

Welcome to Brentwood, New Jersey.

The town's streets are dark and silent.  Street lamps cast long light across the pavement.  It is not yet six pm but the town is already dark and deserted.

Two men cast long shadows in the long lamplight.  They approach the filling station.  It is closed.  They cross the street.  They enter Henry's Diner, the dining car-styled lunch counter, each from a separate door, as if to bookend their entrance, as if to create a battle on two fronts.

Nick Adams, the lone customer, sits at the counter.  He is handed his plate.  He asks for ketchup.  The first spoken line in the film.  "Ketchup."  The manager wipes down the counter with a damp rag.  The two men sit at the corner, perpendicular to each other, facing in.  From the beginning they speak in menacing tones.  They order off the dinner menu. 

The roast pork tenderloin with the applesauce and mashed potatoes.

The chicken croquettes with the cream sauce, the green peas, and the mashed potatoes.

The manager tells them dinner is not served till six.  He can give them any kind of sandwich until then.  Bacon and eggs.  Liver and bacon.  Ham and eggs.  Steaks.  They settle for ham-and-eggs and bacon-and-eggs.  They ask for drinks.  He can give them soda, beer, ginger ale.  No, they want drinks.  Even beer is not good enough for what they want.

It does not matter.  They are not here to eat anyway.  They will not be eating.  They will not be paying.  They will be pulling a gun, kidnapping, gagging, tying up, and hiding.  In order to get information.

You know the big Swede, works over at that filling station?

You mean Pete Lund?

If that's what he calls himself.

We're gonna kill the Swede.

What are you going to kill him for?  What did Pete Lund ever do to you?

He never had a chance to do anything to us.  He never even seen us.  He's only going to see us once.  We're killing him for a friend.

Over the next several minutes two customers enter one after the other as the manager stands at attention, the gun at his back from inside the kitchen window, and we watch each encounter from a different view of the counter.  In the first, we have moved from the 180 angle to the 45, and we see from behind the point of view of the killers.  In the second, we move outside from a low angle, on the ground and therefore below the interior floor, through the screen door at the 135 angle, and we see from behind the point of view of Nick Adams.

In a very short time we have been thrown into extreme driving, extreme music, extreme darkness, extreme lighting, extreme camera angles, and extreme tension.

And we will crane-dolly sweepingly through neighboring yards and up and inside the apartment window as Nick Adams, freed from being bound and gagged, races the killers to Pete Lund's room to warn him before they arrive.

Nick warns him.

Pete does nothing.

The killers arrive and kill him.  A dozen bullets?  Six each?  Count them.

And the movie has just started.

Why did they kill him?

Why did he not try to flee?

What was he hiding from?

In 1947 Jacques Tourneur directed one of the great film noir classics, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Dickie Moore.  In that film Robert Mitchum's character Jeff works at a filling station in a small town, trying to hide from his past.  But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies runs into him by accident, while just passing through that small town and stopping at that filling station.

That is happening here too, in 1946, one year before.  Ole Anderson--the Swede's real name--is living in a small town, working at a filling station, trying to hide from something in his past.  But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies comes into town and stops at that station.  He will go back home and hire the two killers.

If you think Citizen Kane is complicated, and if you think Pulp Fiction plays with time, feast your eyes on this film.

Like Citizen Kane, where we begin with the death of the protagonist and spend the film interviewing witnesses, going into their backstories, reliving the past to try to understand the mystery, here too we begin with a death and spend the film interviewing witnesses and players, trying to put the pieces together, trying to uncover the mystery.

In Citizen Kane, reporter Jerry Thompson tries to understand the meaning behind Charles Foster Kane's last word, Rosebud, as he drops the object, the snow globe.

In The Killers, insurance adjuster Jim Reardon tries to understand the meaning behind Ole Anderson's last words, "I did something wrong once," as he leaves behind the object, a green silk handkerchief with harps on it.

What did he do wrong once?

When?  And to whom?

And what does the handkerchief mean?

Jim Reardon is determined to find out.

Maybe it will cost him his job.

Maybe it will cost him his life.

He is not a cop or a detective.  Yet he is going up against gangsters.

As the threads keep unraveling.

And the people keep coming.

And more people keep dying.

If only he can find the woman.

There is always a woman.

The one who took a powder.

She must know something.

All of this would have been dead and buried.

Forgotten long ago.

If it had not been for that chance meeting at the filling station.

A $2,500 death benefit.

And that green silk handkerchief.