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Special Features
- Features for The Killers (1946 Version):
- New digital transfer
- Andriie Tarkovsky's 1956 student film version of The Killers
- Video interview with writer Stuart M. Kaminsky
- Screen Director's Playhouse 1949 radio adaptation, starring Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters
- Actor Stacy Keach reads Hemingway's short story
- Production and publicity stills
- Essay by Jonathan Lethem
- Paul Schrader's seminal 1972 essay "notes on film noir"
- Music and effects track
- Features for The Killers (1964 Version):
- Reflections by star Clu Gulager
- Excerpts from Don Siegel's autobiography
- Production correspondence including memos, broadcast standard reports, and casting suggestions
- Essay by Geoffrey O'Brien
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
This 1946 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story adds well over an hour of new material to the original tale. The reason is, while director Robert Siodmak, star Burt Lancaster, and an outstanding supporting cast are faithful to Hemingway's work, his story only takes up about 15 minutes of screen time. Burt Lancaster plays the doomed man sought by hired guns in a small town. Hemingway's bruisingly concise dialogue makes an early sequence set in a diner quite unnerving, but after the killers dispense with their prey, Siodmak turns to an insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) who looks into the reasons behind the murder. An exemplary film noir (complete with a fickle femme fatale played by Ava Gardner), The Killers is all mood and fatalism.
The Killers (1964)
The 1964 remake (of sorts) by Don Siegel builds another whole world around Hemingway's narrow, if intense, premise. The two assassins of Siegel's film (Clu Gulager, Lee Marvin) go in search of their intended victim--a teacher (John Cassavetes) at a school for the blind--and find that he not only recognizes his fate when they show up, but seems entirely resigned to it. Curiosity leads the killers to seek out the party who hired them and discover why Cassavetes's character didn't run or fight. Soon the facts tumble into place--the dead man had once been a top-drawer racer who fell for a glamorous woman (Angie Dickinson), the latter gradually pulling him into the orbit of a criminal villain (a convincingly evil Ronald Reagan)--and the film becomes increasingly dark and dangerous. Originally shot for television but rejected for its violence, Siegel's film is a blistering experience of swimming against the currents of fate for one's survival--and losing. --Tom Keogh
Product Description
Customer Reviews
As much as I'm a huge fan of Film Noir, and Burt Lancaster, I have to admit I'd never even heard of the original 1946 version... shame on me! No, I bought this for the masterful Don Siegel version, staring Marvin, Gulager, Angie Dickenson, John Cassavetes, and in his only "bad guy" role, the future President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan! Indeed, it was one of the first films I looked for on DVD when I got my shiny-disc machine, and this is somewhat surprising, as I'd only ever seen the film once, sometime back in the 70's, on British TV!
This film, especially its electrifying final scenes, featuring an incredible performance by Marvin, seared itself into my memory for the better part of 30 years, and watching it again after all this time has NOT been a disappointment! The character of hit man "Charlie Strom" was, for me, the defining image of Lee Marvin. Tough - damn, forget "tough," we're talking hard-as-nails here! - menacing, cold, logical, world weary, and brutal, when the situation warrants it. His presence drives the film, a powerhouse performance; he commands the screen every minute he's up there on it, something Clu Gulager talks about in detail. And Clu's character, "Lee," is as different from Marvin's as it's possible to get. Younger and "hipper," he wears his shades because they make him look cool, and not just to disguise his identity. He's a health nut, always ready to crack a joke, but he has a sadistic streak, he enjoys the fear he instills in people, and whereas "Strom' uses violence as a tool, "Lee" enjoys it for its own sake.
Separated by nearly 20 years in the making, the films are, in reality, light years apart in everything but the name. The 1946 version starts strong when two hit men, Max and Al, played by William Conrad - anyone remember "Cannon?!" - and Charles McGraw respectively, breeze into town, then park themselves in the local dinner. They spit out wonderfully hard-boiled Hemmingway dialogue almost verbatim from the original story, terrorize the staff, and then go off to kill "The Swede." And that is where the original story ends, and it's exactly here that the film runs out of steam, with a dogged insurance investigator, played by Edmond O'Brian, spending the next hour or so trying to piece together what happened to "The Swede." It's effectively done, using flashbacks from various characters, but in comparison to those first 15 minutes or so, it seems pretty lightweight.
Don Siegal's "The Killers," on the other hand, is altogether much stronger meat. He takes the basic premise of Hemmingway's story, a man accepting his own death at the hands of two paid hit men, and runs with it in an entirely different direction. Told entirely from the perspective of the hit men themselves, the story really takes off when Marvin's character starts to think about what just happened, why the mark, ex-racing driver "Johnny North," didn't try to escape, didn't plead for his life. "If they had a chance," he says of all his previous hits, "they ran... but he just stood there and took it." Just as the original film used the device of flashbacks to tell the story, "Strom" and "Lee" set about joining the dots as they track down the various players in this dark morality tale concerning the missing dough from a robbery, a triple-crossing dame, and a love-sick fall-guy. There isn't a wasted line of dialogue or a superfluous frame of celluloid in the whole production, every part is played to perfection, including Claude Akins as "North's" old racing partner, and a wonderfully slimy Ronald Reagan, all pomaded hair, pursed lips, and cocked eyebrow, as crime boss "Jack Browning."
Siegal's "The Killers" was planned as the original TV Movie, but, possibly, in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, the film was deemed to be too violent, the subject matter of two gunmen committing cold-blooded murder just too much for network television. By today's standards, however, the violence is minimal, although the actual hit itself is very effectively staged. But then again, what makes it work are the performances of Marvin, Gulager, and Cassavetes, and the setting, a school for the blind where "North" is a teacher; there's no graphic, blood splattered, "dance of death!"
As a piece of modern Noir, I think Siegal's "The Killers" is exemplary, as is the magnificent production from The Criterion Collection... this really IS Essential Cinema, buy it today, you won't regret it!
The DVD is an excellent print. It is sharp and the soundtrack is well restored.
The "remake" for TV (1964) starring Lee Marvin and co-starring Ronald Reagan (as a heavy no less) is included. It bears little resemblence to the original. The film focuses on the killers this time, rather than an insurance detective. The killers are a preview of the kind of characters we would see thirty years later in Pulp Fiction.
A car with two men rolls down the highway at night. The sign says "Brentwood NJ". [There is no such town. Read more
Rate: 8
4/07: The Killers is a tough, gritty film noir with wonderful performances. Read more
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