NOIR'S SUBVERSIVE WRITERS AND FILM DIRECTORS

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THE KILLING

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/04/magazine/what-they-say-about-stanley-kubrick.html

The Killing (film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the fourth book in the CHERUB series, see The Killing (novel). For the Hatesphere album, see The Killing (EP). The Killing Theatrical release poster Directed by Stanley Kubrick Produced by James B. Harris Written by Stanley KubrickJim Thompson Based on Clean Break byLionel White Narrated by Art Gilmore (uncredited)[1] Starring Sterling HaydenColeen GrayVince EdwardsJay C. FlippenElisha Cook Jr.Marie Windsor Music by Gerald Fried Cinematography Lucien Ballard Editing by Betty Steinberg Distributed by United Artists Release date(s) May 20, 1956 (1956-05-20) (United States) Running time 83 minutes Country United States Language English Budget $320,000[2] The Killing is a 1956 film noir produced by James B. Harris and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It was written by Kubrick and Jim Thompson and based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. The drama features Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards and Elisha Cook Jr.[3] Contents[hide] 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Pre-production 4 Reception 4.1 Critical response 4.2 Awards 5 References 6 External links [edit] Plot Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay (Coleen Gray). He plans to rob two million dollars from the money counting room of a racetrack during a featured race. He assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop (Ted de Corsia), a betting window teller (Elisha Cook Jr.) to give access to the backroom, a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) to shoot the favorite horse during the race to distract the crowd, a wrestler (Kola Kwariani) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and a track bartender (Joe Sawyer). However, the betting window teller, George Peatty, tells his wife, Sherry (Marie Windsor), about the impending robbery. Sherry is bitter at George for not delivering on the promises of wealth he made her at the time of their marriage, and George hopes that telling her about the robbery will placate and impress her. Sherry does not believe him at first; but, after learning that the robbery is real, she enlists her lover, Val Cannon (Vince Edwards), to steal the money from George and his associates. The heist is successful, although the sharpshooter, Nikki, is shot and killed by the police. The conspirators rendezvous at the apartment where they are to meet Johnny and divide up the money. Before Johnny arrives, however, Val appears and holds them up. A shootout ensues, and a badly wounded George is the sole survivor. He goes home and shoots Sherry before dying himself. Johnny, while on his way to the apartment, sees George staggering in the street, and knows that something is wrong. He puts the cash in an old, used suitcase, and he and Fay go to the airport. While boarding their plane, however, the suitcase falls off a cart, breaks open, and the money is swept away by the wind. Fay urges Johnny to flee, but he refuses, stating that there is no use trying to escape. The film ends with two officers coming to arrest him. [edit] Cast Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay Coleen Gray as Fay Vince Edwards as Val Cannon Jay C. Flippen as Marvin Unger Elisha Cook Jr. as George Peatty Marie Windsor as Sherry Peatty Ted de Corsia as Policeman Randy Kennan Joe Sawyer as Mike O'Reilly James Edwards as Track Parking Attendant Timothy Carey as Nikki Arane Joe Turkel as Tiny Jay Adler as Leo the Loanshark Kola Kwariani as Maurice Oboukhoff Tito Vuolo as Joe Piano - motel manager Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Ruthie O'Reilly Three members of the cast, Hayden, de Corsia, and Carey, had appeared together the previous year in the low budget noir film, Crime Wave. “ I give Stanley a free hand to create, and he leaves the money problems to me. ” —James Harris[2] [edit] Pre-production “ We want to make good movies, and make them cheap. The two are not incompatible. ” —Stanley Kubrick[2] Harris, a "prosperous young television distributor" and Kubrick's "Maecenas,"[2] set up Harris-Kubrick Films with the writer/director; the two convinced United Artists to put up $200,000 for the film, with Harris adding $120,000.[2] The film was the first of three on which Harris and Kubrick collaborated as producer and director in a span of less than ten years; Harris got the rights to the novel after Frank Sinatra, who had approached the author before Harris, hesitated during negotiations.[1] Working titles for the film were Clean Break and Bed of Fear.[1] The art director, Ruth Sobotka, was Kubrick's wife at the time.[1] [edit] Reception [edit] Critical response The film performed poorly at the box office and was in general, not critically acclaimed,[1] in spite of Time magazine's prediction that it would "make a killing at the cash booths" and its assertion that Kubrick "has shown more audacity with dialogue and camera than Hollywood has seen since the obstreperous Orson Welles went riding out of town on an exhibitors' poll."[2] A.H. Weiler, film critic for The New York Times, wrote, "Though The Killing is composed of familiar ingredients and it calls for fuller explanations, it evolves as a fairly diverting melodrama. ... Aficionados of the sport of kings will discover that Mr. Kubrick's cameras have captured some colorful shots of the ponies at Bay Meadows track. Other observers should find The Killing an engrossing little adventure."[4] Variety magazine liked the acting and wrote, "This story of a $2 million race track holdup and steps leading up to the robbery, occasionally told in a documentary style which at first tends to be somewhat confusing, soon settles into a tense and suspenseful vein which carries through to an unexpected and ironic windup...Hayden socks over a restrained characterization, and Cook is a particular standout. Windsor is particularly good, as she digs the plan out of her husband and reveals it to her boyfriend."[5] Years later, The Killing gained a "cult" following.[1] For example, Eddie Muller placed the film at 15th among his top 25 favorite noir films, saying "If you believe that a good script is a succession of great scenes, you can't do better than this. Hey, that scene was so good, let's do it again from somebody else's perspective.".[6] In his 1999 book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, Muller wrote, "With The Killing, Stanley Kubrick offered a monument to the classic caper film, and a fresh gust of filmmaking in one package. Who knew when he wrapped it, that it would be the last amusing movie he'd ever make?"[7] In 1999, film critic Mike Emery wrote, "Kubrick's camerawork was well on the way to finding the fluid style of his later work, and the sparse, low-budget circumstances give the film a raw, urgent sort of look. As good as the story and direction are, though, the true strength of The Killing lies in the characters and characterizations."[8] The same year, director Peter Bogdanovich, writing for The New York Times, noted that while The Killing did not make money, it, along with Harris-Kubrick's second film Paths of Glory, established "Kubrick's reputation as a budding genius among critics and studio executives."[9] [edit] Awards Nominations BAFTA Film Award, Best Film from any Source, USA; 1957. [edit] References ^ a b c d e f "Notes for The Killing (1956)". Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=17624&category=Notes. Retrieved 2010-07-21. ^ a b c d e f "Cinema: The New Pictures". Time. June 4, 1956. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,867001,00.html. Retrieved 2010-07-21. ^ The Killing at the Internet Movie Database. ^ Weiler, A.H. (May 21, 1956). "The Killing: New Film at the Mayfair Concerns a Robbery". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E03E3D9123BE333A05752C2A9639C946792D6CF. Retrieved February 7, 2008. ^ "The Killing". Variety. 1956. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117792301.html. Retrieved February 7, 2008. ^ Muller, Eddie. "Endless Night: 25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time". Muller's official website. http://www.eddiemuller.com/top25noir.html. Retrieved 2010-07-21. ^ Muller, Eddie (May 1998). Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. p. ?[page needed]. ISBN 0312180764. ^ Emery, Mike. The Austin Chronicle, film review, March 15, 1999. Last accessed: February 7, 2008. ^ Bogdanovich, Peter (July 4, 1999). "What They Say About Stanley Kubrick". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/04/magazine/what-they-say-about-stanley-kubrick.html. Retrieved 2010-07-21. [edit] External links The Killing at the Internet Movie Database The Killing at the TCM Movie Database The Killing film trailer at YouTube

STANLEY KUBRICK Single-Page After Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep of a heart attack on March 7, even the New York tabloids reported the news with an auteur slant, headlining the director's generally bleak view of life. Words like ''secretive,'' ''reclusive,'' ''strange,'' ''mysterious'' and ''cold'' were repeatedly used to describe him. It's true that the 13 feature-length films he made over 40 years present a disenchanted, sardonic and generally pessimistic view of humanity, but the lifelong friends, intimate associates and family members I spoke to conjure a far more complicated picture of a man who could be deeply reserved but also outgoing, meticulous and laid back, loving and self-absorbed. The precocious son of a Bronx doctor, Kubrick became a staff photographer for Look magazine at 17, but from the start he was captivated by the movies. He began as a kind of one-man band, financing, directing, producing, writing, shooting and editing three short documentaries -- Day of the Fight'' (1950), ''Flying Padre'' (1951) and ''The Seafarers'' (1953) -- and then doing virtually the same thing for his first two extremely low-budget features, ''Fear and Desire'' (1953), backed entirely by an uncle, and ''Killer's Kiss'' (1955).

In 1954, having already run through two marriages, Kubrick moved to Los Angeles and formed a production company with his friend James B. Harris, through which he made his first two professional pictures, the film noir ''The Killing'' (1956), with Sterling Hayden, and the powerful antiwar drama ''Paths of Glory'' (1957), starring Kirk Douglas. While shooting ''Paths of Glory'' Kubrick fell in love with and wed the German painter and actress Christiane Harlan, with whom he would rear two daughters along with Christiane's young daughter from an earlier marriage. ''The Killing'' and ''Paths of Glory'' did not make money, but they did make Kurbick's reputation as a budding genius among critics and studio executives. In 1960, Kirk Douglas hired Kubrick to replace another director on ''Spartacus,'' the only all-Hollywood production Kubrick would ever make, and his first box-office success. He hated the experience. Disenchanted with the industry and having developed a phobia about flying, the director soon afterward moved with his family to England, never again to travel far from home.

http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/still-cause-for-alarm.html

ANTI FASCISM AND THE WaRNINGS -JOURNEY INTO FEAR ERIC AMBLER

Noir is subversive. Noir lifts the veil of normality to reveal the chaos below. The underbelly of reality. The insanity of sanity. The furtive destructiveness of obsession. The truth behind the lies. The disaster of success. The ‘ghost in the machine’. Many of the artists of the classic noir cycle, from the writers of the hard-boiled fiction of the 20s, 30s, and 40s to those involved in the making of the films noir of the 40s and 50s, were ‘subversives’. Artists whose art was a politic statement, a social critique, a thesis on the nature of freedom and social responsibility. Novelists like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ira Wolfert, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler. Screenwriters like Dalton Trumbo, John Paxton, A. I. Bezzeridis, and Carl Foreman. Film-makers and actors like Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, Orson Welles, Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott, Joan Scott, John Garfield, and Marsha Hunt. A number of these artists were vilified and their careers destroyed during the ‘red menace’ years of HUAC and the blacklist. What was ignored then and largely forgotten now is that these men and women were united and largely animated by a common cause: anti-fascism. These liberals and leftists were warning of the dangers of fascism well before the outbreak of WW2, when many of the rightists that later prosecuted the anti-communist hysteria of the immediate cold-war period were apologists of fascism. Eric Ambler was a thriller writer whose best work was written during the late 30s and early 40s. His novels Journey into Fear (1943) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) were made into films noir during the war. In 1938 Ambler published ‘Cause for Alarm’ – not related to any movie with the same title – a story about a British munitions engineer, Marlow, haplessly caught up in espionage in Fascist Italy. The protagonist is aided in his escape from fascist death squads by a mysterious American, Zaleshoff, who may be a Soviet spy but is definitely a socialist. Caught in a snow storm just before crossing into Yugoslavia to freedom, the pair is given shelter for the night by an artist and her elderly father. It transpires that the father is a mathematician, a Professor Beronelli, whose career was destroyed after he refused to pledge a loyalty oath to fascism. The trauma has plunged the man into insanity. The two fugitives discover this after a reviewing the professor’s notes on a perpetual motion machine, and after they realize the daughter is helping them even though she is aware of their fugitive status. After the old man goes to bed, Zaleshoff says to Marlow: ‘Sure! That’s right. What a tragedy! We’re horrified. Hell! Beronelli went crazy because he had to, because it hurt him too much to stay sane in a crazy world. He had to find a way of escape, to make his own world, a world in which he counted, a world in which a man could work according to his rights and know that there was nobody to stop him. His mind created the lie for him and now he’s happy. He’s escaped from everybody’s insanity into his own private one. But you and me, Marlow, we’re still in with the other nuts. The only difference between our obsessions and Beronelli’s is that we share ours with the other citizens of Europe. We’re still listening sympathetically to guys telling us that you can only secure peace and justice with war and injustice, that the patch of earth on which one nation lives is mystically superior to the patch their neighbours live on, that a man who uses a different set of noises to praise God is your natural born enemy. We escape into lies. We don’t even bother to make them good lies. If you say a thing often enough, if you like to believe it, it must be true. That’s the way it works. No need for thinking. Let’s follow our bellies. Down with intelligence. You can’t change human nature, buddy. Bunk! Human nature is part of the social system it works in. Change your system and you change your man. When honesty really is good business, you’ll be honest. When rooting for the next guy means that you’re rooting for yourself too, the brotherhood of man becomes a fact. But you and I don’t think that, do we, Marlow? We still have our pipe dreams. You’re British. You believe in England, in muddling through, in business, and in the dole to keep quiet the starving suckers who have no business to mind. If you were an American you’d believe in America and making good, in breadlines and in baton charges. Beronelli’s crazy. Poor devil. A shocking tragedy. He believes that the laws of thermodynamics are all wrong. Crazy? Sure he is. But we’re crazier. We believe that the laws of the jungle are allright!’Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/still-cause-for-alarm.html#ixzz1ILMYAt9Q Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

What They Say About Stanley Kubrick
By Peter BogdanovichPublished: July 04, 1999
Correction Appended
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After Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep of a heart attack on March 7, even the New York tabloids reported the news with an auteur slant, headlining the director's generally bleak view of life. Words like ''secretive,'' ''reclusive,'' ''strange,'' ''mysterious'' and ''cold'' were repeatedly used to describe him. It's true that the 13 feature-length films he made over 40 years present a disenchanted, sardonic and generally pessimistic view of humanity, but the lifelong friends, intimate associates and family members I spoke to conjure a far more complicated picture of a man who could be deeply reserved but also outgoing, meticulous and laid back, loving and self-absorbed.
The precocious son of a Bronx doctor, Kubrick became a staff photographer for Look magazine at 17, but from the start he was captivated by the movies. He began as a kind of one-man band, financing, directing, producing, writing, shooting and editing three short documentaries -- Day of the Fight'' (1950), ''Flying Padre'' (1951) and ''The Seafarers'' (1953) -- and then doing virtually the same thing for his first two extremely low-budget features, ''Fear and Desire'' (1953), backed entirely by an uncle, and ''Killer's Kiss'' (1955).