The Killers (1946 film)

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The Killers
Image:Thekillers.jpg Theatre Lobby Card
Directed by	Robert Siodmak
Produced by	Mark Hellinger
Written by	Story: Ernest Hemingway Screenplay: Anthony Veiller Richard Brooks John Huston
Starring	Burt Lancaster Ava Gardner Edmond O'Brien Sam Levene
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	Elwood Bredell
Editing by	Arthur Hilton
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	August 28, 1946
Running time	103 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Killers (1946) is an American film noir about the investigation of a mob murder. It is based in part on the short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. The film was directed by Robert Siodmak. It features Burt Lancaster in his screen debut, as well as Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Sam Levene, among others.^[1]

1 Plot
2 Background
3 Cast
4 Adaptations
5 Awards
6 See also
7 Footnotes
8 External links

[edit] Plot

The story is about two hit men assigned to find and kill a man, Ole Anderson aka "the Swede" (Burt Lancaster), at a small-town diner. Impatient for his arrival, they kill him instead at a boarding house where, resigned to his fate, he awaits their arrival.

Because Anderson's life was insured, Investigator Jim Reardon (Edmund O'Brien) is assigned to look into the murder for his company. Interviewing several people from Anderson's past, Reardon develops the theory that Anderson's murder stemmed from an unsolved payroll robbery years earlier.

Working with a police detective (Sam Levene) who was a boyhood friend of Anderson's, Reardon sets a plan in motion to trap the hired killers, and the man who hired them.

[edit] Background

The first twenty minutes of the film, showing the arrival of the two contract killers, and the murder of Anderson, is a very close adaptation of Hemingway's short story. The rest of the film, showing Reardon's investigation of the murder, is wholly original. The Killers was the first, and to date the only, adaptation of a Hemingway work to leave successfully intact the author's laconic dialogue. According to Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker, The Killers "was the first film from any of his works that Ernest could genuinely admire."^[2]

Image:Killersimage123.jpg

Burt Lancaster as "Swede" Andersen.

Producer Mark Hellinger paid $36,750 for the screen rights to Hemingway's story, his first independent production. The screenplay was written by John Huston, uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros., and Richard Brooks.^[3]

Lancaster wasn't his first pick for the part of "the Swede," but Warner Bros. wouldn't lend out actor Wayne Morris for the film. Others considered for the part included Van Heflin, Jon Hall, Sonny Tufts, and Edmund O'Brien, who was instead cast in the role of the insurance investigator. In the role of the femme fatale, Kitty Collins, Hellinger cast Gardner, who had appeared virtually unnoticed in a string of minor films.

The opening chords of Miklós Rózsa's theme music was later reused for the Dragnet television series.

The Killers is used as an example of noir cinematography in the documentary Visions of Light (1992).

[edit] Cast

Burt Lancaster as "Swede" Andersen
Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins
Edmond O'Brien as Jim Reardon
Albert Dekker as Big Jim Colfax
Sam Levene as Lt. Sam Lubinsky
Vince Barnett as Charleston
Virginia Christine as Lilly Harmon Lubinsky
Charles D. Brown as Packy Robinson
Jack Lambert as "Dum-Dum" Clarke
Donald MacBride as R.S. Kenyon
Charles McGraw as Al
William Conrad as Max
Phil Brown as Nick Adams
Mary Ellen Daugherty as Queenie Smith
Jeff Corey as "Blinky" Franklin
Harry Hayden as George
Bill Walker as Sam

[edit] Adaptations

In 1958, director Andrei Tarkovsky, then a film student, created a 19-minute short based on the story which is featured on the Criterion Collection DVD release.^[4]

The film was adapted in 1964 using the same title (see: The Killers), but an updated plot. It was directed by Don Siegel, and featured Lee Marvin and a villainous Ronald Reagan in his last motion picture. The film was originally made for television around the time of Kennedy's assassination, Siegel's film was deemed too violent for the small screen and was released theatrically, first in Europe, then years later in America.^[5]

Scenes from The Killers were used in the Steve Martin film noir spoof Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).^[6]

[edit] Awards

Wins

Edgar Award: Edgar; from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture, Anthony Veiller (writer), Mark Hellinger (producer), and Robert Siodmak (director); 1947.

Academy Awards Nominations (1947)