by Vadim Rizov
Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas. Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick—nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths—here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr.) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. "That meatball?" Sherry corrects him: "A meatball with gravy."
George has been recruited by Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) for a racetrack robbery timed to the minute; narrator Art Gilmore (a veteran TV/radio announcer and voice-over artist who voiced Fdr,...
Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas. Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick—nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths—here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr.) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. "That meatball?" Sherry corrects him: "A meatball with gravy."
George has been recruited by Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) for a racetrack robbery timed to the minute; narrator Art Gilmore (a veteran TV/radio announcer and voice-over artist who voiced Fdr,...
- 8/16/2011
- GreenCine Daily
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