The Killers

Widely considered to be the director’s masterpiece and one of the greatest works of the noir cycle, Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, very loosely based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, follows a Citizen Kane-like narrative in which a dead man’s life is excavated through interviews with those who knew him best. In the case of The Killers, the dead man, known as the Swede (Burt Lancaster), commits a sort of semi-suicide in the film’s first act, which itself is a stunningly composed twelve minutes of film and almost the entirety of Hemingway’s story: when two hit men (Charles McGraw, William Conrad) arrive in the small town of Brentwood and track down the Swede in his dark room in a boarding house, the Swede makes no attempt to flee but lies in bed patiently awaiting the shower of bullets. Having worked at a gas station, the deceased Swede held a life insurance policy with the gas company who sends investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) to find and pay the beneficiary, which leads him on an odyssey of interviews and flashbacks with hotel maid Mary Ellen Daugherty (Queenie Smith), Philadelphia police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), former crime boss Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), and Colfax’s girlfriend, the sensual, milk-drinking Kitty (Ava Gardner), each of whom provides a glimpse of the Swede’s life, which spanned a boxing career, a life of crime, and a dangerous love affair. Siodmak’s camera practically defines the concept of mise-en-scene, each composition of shadows, sets, and performers a cinematic painting, often shot from above or below; watch for a brilliant, single-take payroll heist scene involving continuous crane shots zooming in through windows overlooking hundreds of choreographed extras. Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Siodmak for best director, The Killers was reportedly the only film adaptation of Hemingway’s fiction that pleased Papa himself.