EarDelightBase Waste of Money.

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 21 August 1946 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York opening at the Winter Garden: 28 August 1946. U.S. release: 30 August 1946. U.K. release: 17 January 1947. Australian release: 12 December 1946. 9,269 feet. 103 minutes. SYNOPSIS: A pair of hired killers, Max and Al, enter a small town and systematically track down their intended target, Swede. They find him silently waiting in a darkened room; and he offers no resistance. The killers leave, satisfied that they performed their job well. Riordan, an insurance investigator who learns of the murder's circumstances while following up a routine claim for a very minor amount of money, becomes obsessed with finding out why Swede would sit back and allow two men to murder him.NOTES: Film debuts of Burt Lancaster and William Conrad. Nominated for Academy Award for Best Directing, Robert Siodmak, won by William Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives. Also for Best Screenplay - Veiller alone was nominated - won by Robert E. Sherwood for The Best Years of Our Lives. Also for Film Editing, won by Daniel Mandell for The Best Years of Our Lives. Also music scoring of a Drama or Comedy, won by Hugo Friedhofer for - you guessed it - The Best Years of Our Lives. Incredibly, Woody Bredell's brilliant cinematography was not nominated. Re-made in 1964, see Film Index 8. Number 9 on the National Board of Review's Ten Best list. COMMENT: The movie starts brilliantly - just like Hemingway's short story - with a couple of thug assassins hitting a small town and killing a garage worker who fatalistically makes no attempt to flee and offers no resistance. Why? Hemingway's original offered no explanation. But Veiller has invented an extremely convoluted flashback - or rather series of flashbacks, Citizen Kane style - which in a confusing if convincing fashion present this saga of double cross and betrayal. The structure of the plot is very similar to Out of the Past, but I think this film is less successful in maintaining tension and suspense. From its masterly high point opening sequence in the diner the film tends to run down, slowly but surely dissipating rather than increasing or at least holding the tautness of its storyline. No blame can be sheeted home for this lapse to anyone else but the writers. Siodmak's direction of his players is as tight and forceful as the script allows. Lancaster is particularly impressive in his film debut, giving such a characteristically mature performance no-one unaware of his newcomer status would be any the wiser. Ava Gardner too is effective in an early dramatic role, and there are solid support performances from the large roster of deservedly popular support players.The camerawork as already mentioned is really outstanding, the lighting contributing so dramatically to the mood, Mr Bredell deserves some sort of special citation. Also deserving of a merit certificate for outstanding work is composer Miklos Rozsa whose nervy score is a major component of the film's success.Yes, the movie is successful. Although it never recaptures the heights of its opening sequences, it still generates more than enough suspense to keep an audience on its toes.OTHER VIEWS: It reminds me not so much of Out of the Past as the later Asphalt Jungle (in its recreation of the planning, execution and cross purposes of the caper) and Sorry Wrong Number (in its elaborate flashback plot). I thought both these films had superior scripts which built on and refined upon the ideas and methods of The Killers. For instance, Wrong Number had flashbacks from a present continuously suspenseful happening - rather than one which had already reached its climax - and the events thus described were much more bizarre, unusual and eerily atmospheric (yet still as credible) as the recapitulated conflicts in The Killers.

charlesem Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, at the start of their Hollywood careers, shine out against the noir background of The Killers like the stars they became. Which is perhaps the only major flaw in Robert Siodmak's version of -- or rather extrapolation from -- Ernest Hemingway's classic short story. They're both terrific: Lancaster underplays for once in his film career, which began with this movie, and no one was ever so beautiful or gave off such strong "bad girl" vibes as Gardner. But their presence tends to upend the film, which really stars Edmond O'Brien and a fine cast of character actors. Hemingway's story accounts for only the first 20 minutes or so of the film, the remaining hour of which was concocted by Anthony Veiller, John Huston, and Richard Brooks. In the Hemingway part of the movie, two hit men (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) enter a small-town diner looking for their target, a washed-up boxer they call "the Swede." They bully the diner owner and tie up the cook and Nick Adams (Phil Brown), but when they decide that the Swede isn't going to show up for his usual evening meal, they leave. Nick runs to warn the Swede, Ole Anderson (Lancaster), in his rooming house, but the man exhibits only a passive acceptance of his fate. The short story ends with the Swede turning his face to the wall and Nick returning to the diner, but in the film we see the hit men arrive at the rooming house and kill the Swede. What follows is a backstory that Hemingway never bothered with -- although he later told Huston that he liked the movie -- about an insurance investigator's probe into the killing. The Swede had left a small insurance policy, and when the investigator, Reardon (O'Brien), contacts the beneficiary he begins to find threads that lead him back to an earlier payroll heist. With the help of a friend on the police force, Lubinsky (Sam Levene), who knew the Swede from his boxing days, Reardon sorts out the tangled story of what happened to the loot and how the Swede became the target of a hit. Siodmak's steady hand as a director earned him an Oscar nomination, as did Arthur Hilton's editing and Miklós Rózsa's score, which features a four-note motif that was lifted by composer Walter Schumann for the familiar "dum-da-dum-dum" title music of the 1950s TV series Dragnet, leading to a lawsuit that was settled out of court. Veiller was also nominated for the screenplay, but the contributions of Huston and Brooks went uncredited, largely because they were under contract to other studios.

TheLittleSongbird Regarding the latter, that is saying quite a lot seeing as Ernest Hemingway's work is very difficult to adapt and has met very mixed success on film. What is remarkable about The Killers is how it takes a very good and remarkably powerful short story and expands further on it, one of the few Hemingway adaptations to be just as good as its source material and at times be even better than it.This said it is a fabulous film too on its own terms, and is quintessential film noir, audacious, taut, exciting and suspenseful when it could have been overblown, overwrought or dull if done wrongly. And as much as I did like the 1964 remake, mostly because of Lee Marvin, the 1946 original is the far superior film, with an obvious difference for the better being the production values. The remake was hurt by its rather rushed and cheap made-for-TV look, whereas the production values is one of the strongest things about this version, with its crisp photography, brilliantly atmosphere production design influenced by Edward Hopper and shadowy lighting, that bring such an effective noir-ish atmosphere, the opening scene is particularly striking in this regard.Miklos Rozsa's music here is one of his most ominous and stirringly orchestrated, used sparingly but with palpable effect, really allowing the atmosphere to speak and enhancing it even further when it features. So good in fact, that it was used again for the TV series Dragnet. Robert Siodmak's expertly direction, which maintains a powerfully bleak tone throughout, and a cracking screenplay are further great things, as is a story that is tightly paced and excitingly taut with tons of suspense and intrigue and intricately done and never confusing flashbacks, not getting dull for a minute. This viewer for one was riveted throughout and never found herself confused.Strong acting also helps, with Burt Lancaster thoroughly convincing in his first starring role, his best moments in fact are stunning, and Ava Gardner in the femme fatale role is wonderfully beautiful, classy and mysterious. Albert Dekker and Edmund O' Brien are the standouts in support, Dekker is splendidly larcenous and O'Brien drives the investigation with such taut aplomb. Charles McGraw and William Conrad are chilling too, and you wish the film developed their characters just a little more. While the characters are not the most well-developed, they are still interesting and carry the narrative without any annoyances or irrelevance.All in all, superior version and quintessential film noir in its own right. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Woodyanders Two hit men bump off unresisting victim Ole "Swede" Anderson (Burt Lancaster, terrific in his film debut) without a hitch. Shrewd and persistent insurance investigator Jim Reardon (an excellent performance by Edmond O'Brien) decides to pursue the case and untangles a complex web of crime and trickery that leads to the lovely, yet lethal Kitty Collins (ably played to the irresistibly sultry hilt by a ravishing Ava Gardner).Director Robert Siodmark, working from a crafty and compelling script by Anthony Veiller, not only relates the gripping and intricate story at a steady pace and stages several action set pieces with breathtaking skill and precision, but also does a masterful job of crafting an extremely dark, tense, and brooding fatalistic atmosphere where almost everyone is crooked and practically nothing is initially what it seems to be. The super acting by the top-rate cast keeps this movie humming, with especially stand-out contributions from Albert Dekker as fearsome ringleader Big Jim Colfax, Sam Levene as helpful and streetwise cop Lt. Sam Lubinsky, Vince Barnett as petty thief Charleston, Virginia Christine as the sweet Lily Harmon, Jack Lambert as vicious hoodlum 'Dum-Dum' Clarke, Jeff Corey as doomed junkie Blinky Franklin, and, best of all, Charles McGraw and William Conrad as the splendidly mean and menacing killers Al and Max. Elwood Bredell's sumptuous black and white cinematography provides a beautifully moody look and boasts a few striking unbroken crane shots. The robust score by Miklos Rozsa hits the stirring spot. Highly recommended.