THE KILLERS (1946) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Siodmak. Hellinger. Hemingway. Huston. Lancaster. Gardner. Noir. Criterion. Blu-Ray. 'Nuff Said.

The Killers (1946)
Dir. Robert Siodmak
Prd. Mark Hellinger
Scr. Anthony Veiller, John Huston (uncredited),
Richard Brooks (uncredited), Ernest Hemingway (Short Story)
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker,
Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The angst, existential and otherwise, is so thick in Robert Siodmak's classic film noir adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers, you'd need more than the de rigueur knife to slice through it - a chainsaw, however, would do quite nicely. Hell, even a simple hacksaw might do if the blade is sharp, taut and you have a solid grip. Either way, you're going to hit some raw nerve endings buried in that dense atmosphere.

The first order of business here is to extol the virtues of Mark Hellinger, the film's visionary producer (an advertising man, a newspaper man to the bone, maven of all things Broadway and producer of Brute Force, The Naked City, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, etc.) who revolutionized American cinema with his hardboiled tastes and his savvy for packaging. It's no surprise, then, that the writing here takes as big a centre stage as Siodmak's expressionistically-tinged direction and to-die-for cast. Hellinger not only valued scribes, he was one of the best himself.

Most importantly was how Hellinger took a cue from his Italian Neorealist colleagues across the pond and used real locations whenever possible (and when not, insisting upon studio/backlot art direction and locations which came as close as possible to the real thing).

As for the picture itself, it's cleverly housed via Edmond O'Brien's Jim Reardon, an insurance investigator assisted by cop Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) in piecing the events of a killing together. This approach allows for a variety of perspectives upon the tale of a heist weighted down by plenty of betrayal, ennui and focusing in particular upon the doomed gang member The Swede (Burt Lancaster), a washed-up boxer who turns down a shot at being a cop to enter a life of crime.

The fractured, but easily-followed storytelling structure, has always had scribes comparing it favourably to Citizen Kane, but this is, I think, a bit of a backhanded compliment (and a typically unimaginatively egg-headed response) since Siodmak's overall approach to the material feels wholly original and his writers have brilliantly addressed how to remain true to Hemingway's original whilst also addressing the fact that they're fleshing-out a feature film.

And what fleshing-out! Adhering closely to Hemingway's short story, the movie opens with two especially scuzzy hit men (William Conrad, Charles McGraw) waiting to whack their quarry at the appropriate time. Their target, the aforementioned "Swede", knows they're coming for him, but is resigned to his fate and waits for their arrival. They eventually show up and blow him away.

Well, if this was a simple adaptation of Hemingway's original, the movie would now be over. It's not. True to the spirit of Hemingway's story, the film fills in all the details leading up to and following the events of the picture's opening minutes with terse, matter-of-fact brutality and provides added post-war ennui to a story originally written during the gangster overload of the Prohibition Era. No flappers here, just the promise of a better life in the 40s which in turn, offers bupkis, bad judgement and shattered dreams.

The biggest shattered dream of the equation is femme fatale Kitty Malone (Ava Gardner in her most delectable Sinatra-baiting prime) who not only lands The Swede 3 years in the hoosegow for stealing a whack of jewels for her, but then takes up as the main squeeze of the mean-spirited criminal mastermind (and eventual construction contractor, 'natch), Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) who eventually hires Swede and two other thugs, Dum Dum (Jack Lambert) and Binky (Jeff Corey) to assist him in a risky, dangerous, but lucrative heist. Not only is Kitty receiving the root from Big Jim, but she's not above some mega-betrayal to scam a big score for herself.

However, this femme fatale can't be all bad. She seems rather genuine when she explains why she's with an animal like Big Jim. "I'm poison, Swede, to myself and everybody around me! I'd be afraid to go with anyone I love for the harm I do to them!" She's happy to harm, Big Jim. It gives her strength. Alas, she also, for good measure, no doubt, manages to harm those she loves.

Dames. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em. But it's a mug's game that can land any schlub a prime piece of six-feet-under real estate.

The Killers is guaranteed to knock you on your ass. Tense, tragic, often claustrophobic and featuring one of the best heist scenes in movie history. Siodmak's expert coverage and pacing here comes close to holding its own against Jules Dassin's Rififi heist (kind of interesting since two of Dassin's best pictures, Brute Force and Naked City, were also produced by Hellinger). Bolstered by the starkly contrasted black and white cinematography by the great Woody Bredell and an evocative Miklós Rózsa score (and yes, the main theme's opening few notes were eventually ripped-off for the theme of Jack Webb's long-running TV series Dragnet), the picture delivers all the noir goods any serious aficionado of the form would want.

It's a heart-breaker and then some. When insurance investigator Reardon ties up all the loose ends, he's commended by his boss. In true post-war fashion, a prescient reality in the film which has only increased exponentially to this day in the world in which we live in, the boss claps Reardon on the back and offers the following accolade: "Owing to your splendid efforts, the basic rate of The Atlantic Casualty Company - as of 1947 - will probably drop one-tenth of a cent."

Hitler was dead. No matter. "The Man" took his place.

The Film Corner Rating: *****

The Killers is available on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. In addition to including Don Siegel's blistering 1964 adaptation with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Gulager, Claude Akins, Norman Fell and Rompin' Ronnie Reagan as the scumbag villain, Blu-Ray is loaded with great stuff including a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, Tarkovsky’s short 1956 student-film adaptation of Hemingway’s story, a terrific 2002 interview with Stuart Kaminsky, the Screen Directors’ Playhouse radio adaptation from 1949, starring Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters plus, ever-so delectably, a 2002 audio recording of actor Stacy Keach reading Hemingway’s "The Killers".

Order directly from the links below and contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

In Canada, order HERE

In USA, order HERE

In UK, order HERE

DARK ALIBI - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Phil Karlson, legendary director of "The Phenix City Story", "99 River Street" and "Kansas City Confidential" does a bang-up job with this Monogram-produced Charlie Chan picture with the estimable Sidney Toler.

Dark Alibi (1946) ***
dir. Phil Karlson
Starring: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Ben Carter and Teala Loring

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When 20th Century Fox finally decided to give the Charlie Chan series a rest after several years of excellent product (second features with Grade A treatment), the stalwart poverty row company Monogram Pictures grabbed the franchise's torch and generated a series of ultra-low budget Chan adventures.

While there isn't a single Monogram Chan that comes close to the even the most run-of-the-mill Fox productions, I still and will always have a special place in my heart for them. A good part of this fondness might well derive from extremely early childhood memories.

For whatever reason, it was the Monogram Chans that played endlessly on the bottom dwelling independent American TV station KCND in Pembina, North Dakota that beamed its wonderful signal into Winnipeg to save us from the mostly execrable two Canadian TV stations we received locally. I didn't actually see the Fox Chans until my early teenage years and by then, the Monograms were firmly entrenched within my movie-absorbent brain and the memories, even then, were always warm and fuzzy.

Looking at the Monograms now, I still love them for the aesthetic elements that comprise virtually every picture in their Chan canon. The stock footage for establishing shots, the perfunctory sets, the small number of interior locations with scenes stretched beyond the limit to keep camera and lighting set-ups to a minimum, the lack of any A-list talent on camera (but some very fine character actors in support) and the clearly sub-par writing; all contribute immeasurably to my enjoyment of them.

Not that I laugh derisively or take "guilty" pleasure in seeing Grade-Z production values, but rather, I enjoy them the same way one enjoys comfy old slippers long past their age of, shall we say, freshness.

Call them, if you will, the Kraft Dinner Chans.

Most of these pictures retained the services of Sidney Toler (who so expertly took over the role at Fox from Warner Oland and eventually made it exclusively his own) and when Toler was clearly unable to continue due to cancer, Roland Winters took over for six pictures and while not up to Toler and Oland, at least delivered the strangest interpretation of Chan ever set forth on celluloid.

Dark Alibi is one of the very best Monogram productions. In this episode of the franchise, the venerable sleuth of the Asian persuasion coincidentally happens to be leaving the office of an old pal, a public defender who is assailed by the desperate daughter of an innocent man on death row. What's a Chan to do? Well, of course he needs to help the young lass out. And so begins a race against time as Chuckles needs to save the woman's father AND find the real killer. Chan's theory is that someone has figured out how to forge fingerprints. No mean feat. Will Chan do it? You bet he Chan!!! (Kind of like "Bob the Builder" - YES HE CAN!!!)

Several elements are at play in making this the best Monogram Chan.

First and foremost is the fine direction of Phil Karlson who spent many of his early years toiling in the trenches of Monogram and other Poverty Row studios - delivering genre pictures that were always a cut above the rest. In the 50s, Karlson would go on to direct some of the finest noir crime thrillers ever made - most notably The Phenix City Story, Kansas City Confidential, Scandal Sheet and the especially harrowing 99 River Street. In the 60s he made one of Elvis Presley's best, Kid Galahad, and the following decade he made the great 70s noir Framed and one of the biggest vigilante pictures of all time, the original Walking Tall.

With Dark Alibi, Karlson outdoes himself within the typical Monogram constraints. The numerous dialogue scenes, which in many other hands would have been mind-numbingly dull, are rendered with efficiency and style. Karlson's wide and medium compositions are especially well framed and his blocking is always lively and he keeps the dialogue brisk and crackling. He even manages to pull off two first-rate set-pieces; the opening heist with lots of shadow and key light and a terrific sequence involving an eerie, well-stocked theatricasl supply warehouse. There's also a rip snorting prison shootout which is a definite rarity in Chan mysteries and as such is a welcome bonus.

Secondly, the film has a great sense of humour. The comic rapport between Mantan Moreland (playing Birmingham Brown, Chan's loyal driver and manservant) and Chan's Number Three son, Tommy (Benson Fong) is always lively. The two actors clearly had fun playing off each other and by extension, we enjoy it also. Their routines vary from utterly insane conversations punctuated with Chan's deadpan disapproval of their laziness to the two of them getting into a variety of sticky wickets by ignoring Chan's orders for them to sit still. Moreland, the chubby, almost cherubic African-American comedian with bulging pop-eyes gets to play a few scenes with his equally brilliant straight man Benjamin Brown. Their unfinished sentence routines are especially brilliant displays of coming timing and wisely, Karlson shoots them in a simple medium proscenium which is instinctively the right thing to do, but also a nod to the vaudeville style of their gags.

And on the humour front, no Chan picture can be without the hilarious aphorisms spouted by the wise Asian detective. Dark Alibi is full of them. Some of my favourites in the picture include:

"Ancient proverb say: One small wind can raise much dust."

"Honorable grandmother always say: Do not think of future - it come too soon."

"Remember old saying: Earthquake may shatter the rock, but sand upon which rock stood still right there in same old place."

"Skeletons in closets always speak loudest to police."

"Ugliest trade sometimes have moment of joy. Even gravedigger know some people for whom he would do his work with extreme pleasure."

Of course, all of the above are delivered by Toler with a straight face and full portent in his voice, while with others, one catches that tell-tale Toler eye-twinkle. In either case, they're always knee-slappers.

Chan's witty aphorisms and the antics of Mantan Moreland and Number Three Son are often cited, wrongly, as racist. Uh, this is the 40s. It's a different time and place and as such, reflects said time and place. If one responds positively to the Chan series at all, it seems impossible to me how anyone could take serious exception to any of Chan's aphorisms, his son's laziness and Moreland's hilarious antics and line-readings. If anything, one could charge the films with being ethnocentric, but there is none of the implied hatred inherent in the humour that seems to be a necessary ingredient to label something as racist. The humour is gentle and, in its own cockeyed way, rather respectful of Asian and African-American culture. Moreland in particular is a great comic actor - truly great! Denigrating his style of humour by contemporary standards of political correctness frankly detracts from acknowledging his comic genius. That, for me, is far more offensive than any stereotypes Moreland propagates.

Finally, the third element contributing to the picture's lofty position at the top of the Monogram Chan heap is that the script, while hardly a work of genius, delivers a decent mystery with a genuinely surprising conclusion. It also features the aforementioned fingerprint forgery idea which, as ludicrous as it sounds, actually works in a relatively convincing fashion. It is also endowed with a race-against-time structure that definitely heightens the suspense.

Dark Alibi is a solid Monogram Picture, indeed, and an excellent addition to the studio's contribution to the cinematic Chan canon.

"Dark Alibi" is part of a four film box set from TCM via Warner Home Entertainment. A wise programming choice was to include Toler's last and Winter's first renderings of the role. The transfers are all decent, but one wonders why so much money was lavished on the handsome packaging of the films in a nice cardboard box with great graphics and no effort put into the uninspired menus and lack of decent extras.

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A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Love during wartime, a final farewell, a fight for life. Nobody made movies like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Cinema is all the better for it, as is the world. Such is the power of the greatest medium of Artistic Expression granted to us.

A CINEMATIC 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, EASTERN-RITE NATIVITY AND FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY: Join me in this special celebration of cinema as each day I will be publishing a review in honour of this season of good will and focusing on films and filmmakers who have made a contribution to both the human spirit and the art of film.

For the THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMAS, Klymkiw Film Corner gives to you…

"What do you think the next world is like? I have my own ideas. I think it starts where this one leaves off or could leave off if we'd listened to Plato, Aristotle and Jesus." - David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesay, Raymond Massey

****

By Greg Klymkiw

With an opening as staggering as the one on display in this extraordinary Powell/Pressburger production, one is almost distracted by the thought that no picture could ever truly recover from such a dazzling romantic entry point.

How do you go up from up?

Peter Carter (David Niven), a doomed wartime pilot in a flaming airplane spirals to his death and participates in a final conversation with June (Kim Hunter), a honey-voiced dispatcher. As their conversation over the radio waves proceeds, these two souls remain stoic in the face of certain doom, even as they realize what a match made in Heaven they might have been had things been different. He is touched by her spark of life and compassion, and she for his gentle bravery. But as the conversation over the radiowaves proceeds and death for Peter is more inevitable than ever before, the time comes for this couple to say their final goodbyes.

How in God’s name can a picture get better than this?

It does, and then some, for A Matter of Life and Death, a picture rendered by the immortal Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – a team of filmmakers who, under the corporate moniker of The Archers, hit bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye. Each and every one of their movies (Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes, etc.) pushes the boundaries of traditional cinematic storytelling with the kind of ingenuity that has seldom been matched (but is certainly emulated and outright copied).

From a storytelling standpoint, A Matter of Life and Death constantly keeps our eyeballs glued to the screen. One moment, we are plunged into a situation wherein we have absolutely no idea where the story can go and the next, we are convinced it’s going one way and our expectations are pleasantly dashed. This happens so often, that when we are actually treated to a moment in the story that we’re convinced is going to go in a particular direction and it actually DOES go there, we’re delighted that it goes into a comfortable, familiar place – not only because it is emotionally the right thing for the movie to do at that point, but because it gives us what we crave at just the right moment.

This is great writing – no doubt about it. The abovementioned opening features our two romantic leads who, as characters, have not even met face to face, but WE see them and WE want them to meet face to face. And hell, they want to meet face to face too, but this is the first few minutes of the movie and our leading man is in a burning plane and he decides to make a suicide jump rather than go down in a crisp. The leading lady, while clearly distraught, has suffered enough and/or witnessed enough suffering during this world war to know that death will almost always be the clear inevitability.

Unfortunately, the original and rather unimaginative American title, Stairway To Heaven was enough of a silly tip-off to let us know that the story would occasionally veer into the spiritual/fantastical realm, but even within that context, Powell and Pressburger’s command of the proceedings is so taut that we’re still on the edge of our seats wondering where this could possibly go.

The direction the narrative takes is that our leading man does survive the plunge and does meet the voice on the other end of the radio and, of course, they do fall in love. Alas, the bureaucracy that runs the spirit world on the other side of death has made a dreadful mistake. Peter WAS supposed to die, but someone slipped up. When Death comes a collecting, Peter balks and demands a hearing. His life and the lives of those around him have irrevocably been changed because of this mistake and it seems extremely unfair that he is to be plucked from the physical world after having been given a chance to live longer than he was supposed to.

A trial is needed. However, the trial that proceeds has less to do with a matter of life and death and veers into the political arena of American vs. British superiority. This, of course, is yet another staggering plot element as this captures, quite resolutely, the animosity between the British and American sides during the war on Hitler.

In addition to the magnificent plotting, elegant dialogue and complex characters, A Matter of Life and Death is also replete with the Powell and Pressburger visual genius. Not only are images used in thrilling and engaging ways to propel the story forward, but some of the most staggering images and special effects are designed in order to tell the story as well as it is. With a combination of outstanding production design and both optical and compositional genius, this is a picture that not only holds up in a modern context in terms of the effects but also renders many contemporary digital effects to utter shame in comparison.

Last, but certainly not least and what makes this picture one of the greatest of all time is that Powell and Pressburger are not afraid to wear their hearts on their respective creative sleeves. The film is wildly romantic, sentimental and emotionally stunning.

It has heart, and that, if anything is something to be cherished.

Innovation AND heart.

It’s an unbeatable combination.

“A Matter of Life and Death” (AKA “Stairway to Heaven”) is available on DVD in a package titled “Michael Powell, The Collector’s Choice” and double-billed with Powell’s “Age of Consent”.