Review for The Killers

Wow! This is what HD is all about. One of the greatest film noir’s looking this damned good. It’s been a while since sheer picture quality is the first thing I can think of when writing a review. Every frame here could be grabbed and printed as a high quality art print. Brilliant noir cinematography combined with a superb, cleaned up high definition 1.35:1 aspect ratio transfer makes this one of the most satisfying watches of the year. It’s also an excellent movie.

Director Robert Siodmak’s ‘The Killers’ (1946) has become something of a casebook definition of film noir. It may not feature Bogart or Cagney but all the vital ingredients are here. Hoodlums, a classic femme fatale (a stunning Ava Gardner), deep and dark high contrast black and white cinematography with long shadows and harsh lighting, wise-cracking dialogue and a plot full of twists and turns.




Loosely based (perhaps ‘inspired by’ is more accurate) the Ernest Hemingway short story of the same name, already a favourite for radio dramas, ‘The Killers’ starts by following the tale fairly accurately and then goes off and does its own thing. Despite this, Hemingway expressed great satisfaction with the completed film, proclaiming it to be totally in spirit with his original tale.

It kicks off with two professional hit-men arriving at an eatery in a remote one-horse-town and asking after ‘the Swede’. Using flashback after flashback, we learn that ‘the Swede’ is none other than a washed-up boxer with a broken hand, Ole ‘Swede’ Anderson, played by Burt Lancaster in his screen-debut at the tender age of 33. He’s already fallen for gangster’s moll, Kitty Collins, played to perfection by a purring 23 year old Ava Gardner, also in her big screen debut. Now may be the time to note that she is utterly electric in the role, and it’s no surprise that the film catapulted her to almost instant super-stardom.


The Director of the movie, German Robert Siodmak, has been credited with helping create the whole film noir look and feel though it’s just as likely that he was only part of this collective trend, borrowing heavily from German expressionist lighting with its frequent use of elongated and dark shadows. Perhaps more notable is the film’s use of multiple flashbacks. (No less than 11 in total!) Although the subject matter may be aligned with pulp-fiction of the period, the sophisticated narrative most certainly did not.
There are two major plots within the tale. The first is that of a zealous insurance claims officer investigating the unsolved mystery of who killed the Swede. This allows us to join up all the aspects of the Swede’s life – from his early start in boxing to his almost suicidal acceptance of his fate at the hands of the henchmen featured in the opening sequence. The second is the underworld shenanigans of a group of hoodlums with Kitty being the glue that joins the two paths together.

Having met Kitty whilst at a party with his current girlfriend (who would later marry a police detectivein the film), the Swede falls so headlong into the relationship that he simply fails to see that he’s just one more mug in Kitty’s lair. Kitty is a gangster’s moll (Big Jim Colfax who is initially in jail when she meets the Swede).

The Swede lies for Kitty when she’s arrested for wearing stolen jewelry, and takes the rap himself, culminating in a jail sentence. We know at that point that he is a lost man.


When he gets involved in a heist at a hat factory, Kitty plays the Swede off against the others, persuading him to run away with all the money. Kitty has double-crossed everyone in order to get the money for herself. It’s a complex but exciting film that sees a justice of sorts being meted out at the end.

The film was produced by Mark Hellinger, who had already turned in The Roaring Twenties (1939) and High Sierra (1941), who elected to work the Hemingway story with screen-writer Anthony Veiller who, in turn, collaborated with an uncredited John Huston.

The film was a huge success on release, and was deservedly nominated for four Academy Awards. One of the nominations was for its distinctive score (Miklos Rozsa) which was later slightly adapted for the ‘Dragnet’ TV Series.

The Arrow release comes with some top notch extras including a reversible sleeve featuring one of the original posters and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw. It also ships with a booklet (which is where all the stills in this review came from) with new writing by Sergio Angelini and archive interviews with director Robert Siodmak, producer Mark Hellinger and cinematographer Woody Bredell.


On the disc itself there is an isolated Music & Effects soundtrack to highlight Miklós Rózsa's famous score which is fun to play whilst reading the booklet.

There’s also an informative piece to camera by Frank Krutnik, author of In a Lonely Street, which introduces the film and offers a detailed commentary on four key scenes.

A featurette, ‘ Heroic Fatalism’ is a video essay adapted from Philip Booth's comparative study of multiple versions of The Killers (Hemingway, Siodmak, Tarkovsky, Siegel). It’ll be fun to see the Angie Dickinson made-for-TV version which I think is due for release by Arrow in the new-year.


A really nice addition to the set, which I really enjoyed, were the three archive radio pieces inspired by The Killers: the 1949 Screen Director's Playhouse adaptation with Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters; a 1946 Jack Benny spoof; the 1958 Suspense episode 'Two for the Road' which reunited original killers William Conrad (later famed as ‘Frank Cannon’ ) and Charles McGraw. These varied in length from 15 minutes to half an hour but were remarkably clear and well-performed for such vintage live-radio recordings.



You also get some stills and a posters gallery along with trailers for the The Killers, Brute Force, The Naked City and Rififi.

‘The Killers’ is a classic film that, if you have any interest in film noir or forties cinema, you’ll want to add to your collection. This Arrow Academy release is the best way to do it with a superb transfer and a host of great extras. Essential.