THE KUBRICK SERIES #4:
THE KILLING
Perhaps its no surprise that so many young filmmakers at the start of their careers opt to make crime films. The crime genre and its many subgenres have long been popular in many forms, not just in films but in books, comics and tv shows. Perhaps the appeal of the genre lies in the action and the conventions, or perhaps in the existential and philosophical nature that underpins the majority of works in the genre. In film we tend to look at the film noirs of the 1940s and 50s as the precursors to filmmakers like Michael Mann, Jean-Pierre Melville or the Coen Brothers, all of whom tend to explore ideas of human nature in their respectice films. And although it tends to get overshadowed by other films of the era, I think Stanley Kubrick's breakout film The Killing should very well be up there with these other types of films.
Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay, the protagonist of the film.
Stanley Kubrick met aspiring film producer James B. Harris, and the two immediately hit it off. They quickly formed their own production company, Harris-Kubrick Productions, and they quickly started looking for material suitable for a film. They soon found the pulpy crime novel Clean Break by Lionel White, and immediately optioned the rights. They were able to set the film up at United Artists, who agreed to co-finance and distribute the film, now titled The Killing. Kubrick got together with respected crime novelist Jim Thompson to write the screenplay, but Thompson would be relegated to a simple "dialogue" credit, with Kubrick receiving full credit for the screenplay. Thompson wouldn't mind on the condition that he got to co-write Kubrick's next film Paths of Glory. They were able to sign b-star Sterling Hayden to play the lead for $40,000, and the film was granted a budget of $320,000, a relative step up from Kubrick's previous two pictures.
Stanley Kubrick and Sterling Hayden between takes.
The Killing tells the labyrinthine story of ex-convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) who has gathered up a small crew of co-conspirators to commit the seemingly "perfect" heist: the robbery of a race track with an estimated profit of $2 million, all in the hopes of Johnny being able to escape with his devoted girlfriend Fay (Coleen Gray). However, as with almost every heist movie in existense, the seemingly perfect plan begins to fall apart, and everyone must fend for themselves as unexpected forces interfere with them. Over the course of the film we get to see various different perspectives from everyone in Johnny's crew and how they relate to each other, all in non-chronological order.
For the first time in his career, Kubrick was working with only professionals both on-and off-camera, and with the financial backing of a major Hollywood studio. Although he wasn't working with any a-list movie star like he would on his next film in front of the camera, the actors in this film range from old pros like Elisha Cook, Jr., Marie Windsor, Joe Sawyer, to fresh new talent in the acting community like Vince Edwards, James Edwards (no relation to Vince), Timothy Carey and Joe Turkel, and they all deliver solid performances which shows Kubrick's growth as an actor's director as well as a brilliant craftsman. Several of the actors, mainly Hayden, Carey and Turkel would make their first appearance in a Kubrick film. You can also tell that Kubrick had learned from his experiences with Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss how to direct actors, since they all deliver solid performances.
Behind the camera, Kubrick would simply have to remain satisfied as the co-writer and director of the film as he was now working with a professional Hollywood crew. With the exception of returning composer Gerald Fried, Kubrick's then-wife Ruth Sobotka serving as the art director, and old high-school friend Alexander Singer taking on duties as associate producer, everyone else were a Hollywood professional, with the most prominent one being cinematographer Lucien Ballard probably, who had previously worked on Samuel Fuller's Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and would go on to work multiple times with Sam Peckinpah. In fact, Ballard would perhaps be the first major Hollywood professional to clash with Kubrick during filming, and he would certainly not be the first. On one occassion, Kubrick had laid out a tracking shot with a 25mm lens attached to the camera, but when he got back Ballard had moved back the track and replaced the lens with a 50mm lens. Kubrick quietly told Ballard that he could either put back the camera with the 25mm lens or he could simply leave the set and not return. Ballard stayed on set, but for Kubrick to show that kind of guts to a Hollywood pro is mighty impressive to say the least.
Although Hayden is technically the star of the film, the two of the standouts performances in the film, at least they were for me, belong to Elisha Cook, Jr. and Marie Windsor, playing husband and wife respectively. Cook was a master at playing weak willed and easily persuaded criminal, as one could see in his earlier work like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), and he reprises that type of character in this film, although this time he's even weaker and possibly even dumber. Windsor on the other hand excells at playing the sexy and manipulative femme fatale who goads Cook's character into giving her information regarding the robbery, and she proves to be the deciding factor that turns this seemingly perfect plan into a horrible failure (without giving too much away). Although one may be dissapointed that Kubrick never really goes beyond genre conventions of Windsor's character, I honestly think it's a minor criticism of a film that still manages to keep the viewer guessing the whole time.
I want to go back to this word which I have referred to many times in this review already, and that word is "perfect", and this is were I think the existential nature of the film lies. Johnny Clay thinks he has planned the perfect heist, and throughout the film that would appear to be the case. But there's one element that he didn't counter on: the human factor. None of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes or screw up in our lifetimes. And I feel like this is might be the one theme that truly connects The Killing with the remainder of Kubrick's work: his characters are always searching for perfection, wether it be the perfect doomsday machine, the perfect computer, the perfect behaviour modification technique etc. But they're always let down by the decisive human factor. So in a sense, we're all burdened by our own humanity in search for perfection, which is what happens to the characters in many of Kubrick's films, including The Killing. The film also demonstrates that perhaps we may not be in control over our fates, and we will never know what will happen to us in the future.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of The Killing is the level of influence it has had on future American crime films, wether conciously or not. Quentin Tarantino credits The Killing as a source of inspiration for his own heist film Reservoir Dogs (1992), which similairly tells a non-linear and labyrinthine story of a heist gone wrong. I also suspected that Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie might have used The Killing's non-linear structure as an inspiration for The Usual Suspects (1995), but McQuarrie told me on Twitter that he hadn't seen it yet at that point, so I was wrong. Finally I think you can definitely see the influence of The Killing on the works of Christopher Nolan, a huge Kubrick fan, who actually referenced it directly in the beginning of The Dark Knight (2008) with the bank robbers wearing clown masks.
To sum up this review, I would like to say that I think The Killing is a great and very entertaining film that definitely shows the promise of a brilliant filmmaker at the beginning of his career. And although the film in the end was no commercial success, it was well received by critics who praised Kubrick's storytelling and camera work. The master was now ready to make embark on his first masterpiece!
From left to right: Ted de Corsia, Joe Sawyer, Elisha Cook, Jr, Sterling Hayden and Jay C. Flippen plotting the seemingly perfect heist.
Behind the camera, Kubrick would simply have to remain satisfied as the co-writer and director of the film as he was now working with a professional Hollywood crew. With the exception of returning composer Gerald Fried, Kubrick's then-wife Ruth Sobotka serving as the art director, and old high-school friend Alexander Singer taking on duties as associate producer, everyone else were a Hollywood professional, with the most prominent one being cinematographer Lucien Ballard probably, who had previously worked on Samuel Fuller's Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and would go on to work multiple times with Sam Peckinpah. In fact, Ballard would perhaps be the first major Hollywood professional to clash with Kubrick during filming, and he would certainly not be the first. On one occassion, Kubrick had laid out a tracking shot with a 25mm lens attached to the camera, but when he got back Ballard had moved back the track and replaced the lens with a 50mm lens. Kubrick quietly told Ballard that he could either put back the camera with the 25mm lens or he could simply leave the set and not return. Ballard stayed on set, but for Kubrick to show that kind of guts to a Hollywood pro is mighty impressive to say the least.
Although Hayden is technically the star of the film, the two of the standouts performances in the film, at least they were for me, belong to Elisha Cook, Jr. and Marie Windsor, playing husband and wife respectively. Cook was a master at playing weak willed and easily persuaded criminal, as one could see in his earlier work like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), and he reprises that type of character in this film, although this time he's even weaker and possibly even dumber. Windsor on the other hand excells at playing the sexy and manipulative femme fatale who goads Cook's character into giving her information regarding the robbery, and she proves to be the deciding factor that turns this seemingly perfect plan into a horrible failure (without giving too much away). Although one may be dissapointed that Kubrick never really goes beyond genre conventions of Windsor's character, I honestly think it's a minor criticism of a film that still manages to keep the viewer guessing the whole time.
Cook and Windsor as husband and wife.
I want to go back to this word which I have referred to many times in this review already, and that word is "perfect", and this is were I think the existential nature of the film lies. Johnny Clay thinks he has planned the perfect heist, and throughout the film that would appear to be the case. But there's one element that he didn't counter on: the human factor. None of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes or screw up in our lifetimes. And I feel like this is might be the one theme that truly connects The Killing with the remainder of Kubrick's work: his characters are always searching for perfection, wether it be the perfect doomsday machine, the perfect computer, the perfect behaviour modification technique etc. But they're always let down by the decisive human factor. So in a sense, we're all burdened by our own humanity in search for perfection, which is what happens to the characters in many of Kubrick's films, including The Killing. The film also demonstrates that perhaps we may not be in control over our fates, and we will never know what will happen to us in the future.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of The Killing is the level of influence it has had on future American crime films, wether conciously or not. Quentin Tarantino credits The Killing as a source of inspiration for his own heist film Reservoir Dogs (1992), which similairly tells a non-linear and labyrinthine story of a heist gone wrong. I also suspected that Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie might have used The Killing's non-linear structure as an inspiration for The Usual Suspects (1995), but McQuarrie told me on Twitter that he hadn't seen it yet at that point, so I was wrong. Finally I think you can definitely see the influence of The Killing on the works of Christopher Nolan, a huge Kubrick fan, who actually referenced it directly in the beginning of The Dark Knight (2008) with the bank robbers wearing clown masks.
The bank robbery going down.
To sum up this review, I would like to say that I think The Killing is a great and very entertaining film that definitely shows the promise of a brilliant filmmaker at the beginning of his career. And although the film in the end was no commercial success, it was well received by critics who praised Kubrick's storytelling and camera work. The master was now ready to make embark on his first masterpiece!
To be continued with: Paths of Glory (1957)
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