The Killing (1956)

The film noir/heist movie The Killing was Stanley Kubrick’s third feature film. That’s if you count Fear and Desire (1953). Kubrick didn’t. He didn’t want it ever to be seen again. So Kubrick would have regarded The Killing as his second real feature, following Killer’s Kiss (1955).

The Killing was based on Lionel White’s excellent noir novel Clean Break which I’ve reviewed elsewhere.

The Killing has been hailed for its innovative approach to narrative but in fact most of the innovations were already present in the novel.

For The Killing Kubrick had an extremely strong cast. Not huge stars, but very fine people perfectly cast.

This is a complex and intricate heist story. Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) has been serving five years in prison. Now he’s out and he plans to rob the racetrack. It can’t be done. There’s just too much security. But Johnny thinks he’s found a fool-proof way to do it. And it really is a very clever plan. There’s just one minor weakness. The plan is fiendishly complicated and relies on split-second timing. One small unexpected event could throw the plan into chaos. There’s a reason Johnny was in prison. He’s clever, but not quite as clever as he thinks he is.

Johnny has decided that it’s a mistake to use professional criminals on a job like this. They’re too easy for the police to trace. He’s using amateurs, and he can rely on them because they all want money really really bad. And this robbery could net them two million dollars. Two million dollars in 1956 was an almost inconceivably huge amount of money. Enough to finance a life of ease and luxury for everyone involved.

Cop Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia) is a key player. He’s not a crooked cop but he’s a gambler and he’s heavily in debt. Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen) will provide the money needed to set things up. Bartender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer) will be needed for one crucial moment during the robbery, as will racetrack cashier George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.).

George needs the money because without money his wife Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) will leave him. Sherry is no good but George is crazy about her. He just can’t think straight where Sherry is concerned.

The robbery itself is presented to us from the viewpoint of various characters, with the narrative constantly jumping back and forth in both place and time. That’s more or less how the novel is structured but doing this in a movie in 1956 was very very daring indeed, and the way Kubrick does it seems more radical than the way it’s done in the book.

It’s this unconventional narrative that makes The Killing such an important and striking movie. This was Kubrick, still inexperienced and still in his twenties, serving notice that he was going to start breaking cinematic rules in a big way. In The Killing he manages to break the rules whilst still giving us an exciting heist movie that is perfectly coherent and easy to follow. Kubrick trusted his audience to pick up on what he was doing.

Sterling Hayden and Elisha Cook Jr. give what are close to career-best performances. Hayden is very low-key because that’s the kind of guy Johnny is. He’s the kind of criminal who just loves sitting and planning crimes. Johnny should have become a crime writer instead of a criminal. The problem with real crimes is that you have to put them into execution and that’s when your ingenious plans start to go wrong. Johnny never loses his cool. Elisha Cook Jr. is all nervous energy and anxiety and thwarted love. He’s a loser but we feel sorry for him.

Jay C. Flippen is always worth watching. Marie Windsor gives us a memorable femme fatale in Sherry. She’s a schemer and a tramp and she knows it but she still manages to justify it to herself. Vincent Edwards is good as Val. I can’t tell you what part he plays in the story without revealing spoilers.

The heist itself is filmed in an intricate and methodical way as the pieces slowly slot together. We can see lots of things that might go wrong but we don’t know exactly which of those things will go awry.

Kubrick sticks very closely to White’s novel, except for the ending. I don’t think the ending was changed due to censorship problems or even studio interference. I just think Kubrick thought his ending was a bit more cinematic. The endings of both book and movie work extremely well.

Now we have to confront one of the most controversial questions in movie history - the aspect ratios of Kubrick’s movies. It’s a fiendishly complicated subject and people get very heated about it. As far as I can make out Kubrick not only shot but composed most (but not all) his movies in the 1.37:1 ratio, the old “Academy” ratio. When shown in theatres they were usually cropped to make them appear to be in widescreen ratios. Kubrick had no control over this. When it came time to release his films on DVD Kubrick made it very clear that he wanted them to be seen in the 1.37:1 aspect ratio because that was the closest to his original intentions when he made the movies. Kubrick’s wishes were respected.

When his movies started to be released on Blu-Ray his wishes were ignored and most of his movies were cropped to make them fit widescreen aspect ratios.

The Killing seems to have been shot and composed in 1.37:1. The original DVD releases were in this format. When Criterion released the movie on Blu-Ray they ignored Kubrick’s wishes and cropped it to make it compatible with the 16:9 format. So if you buy the Criterion Blu-Ray you’re not seeing the movie the way Kubrick wanted it seen, you’re seeing it the way the folks at Criterion have decided you’re going to see it. It was presumably a commercial decision - modern audiences prefer the widescreen formats. But that’s not what Kubrick wanted and since he was the director I assume he was in the best position to judge how his movies should be presented. Watching The Killing in 1.37:1 I have to say that it looks right.

But as I said it’s a controversial topic and no-one can claim to have a definitive answer.

The Killing has plenty of film noir credentials. The various members of the gang are mostly vaguely sympathetic, but they’re losers. They’re motivated not just by greed but by wishful thinking, which to me seems very noir. They really think they’re going to get away with it, because if they don’t they’ll have to accept being losers for the rest of their lives.

A brilliant movie by a director who was already confident enough to go his own way, and skilful enough to get away with it. Very highly recommended.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Barry Lyndon was released in 1975 and is in every way a typical Stanley Kubrick film. It’s visually breathtaking. It’s also entirely lacking in emotion, but deliberately so. Kubrick does not want us to care about any of the characters in the film. He wants us to regard them in the same dispassionate way that he views them. It’s a movie you may or may not enjoy but in its own way it’s an extraordinary movie.

It was based on a very minor novel (The Luck of Barry Lyndon) by Thackeray and again this is almost certainly a deliberate choice on Kubrick’s part. Had he chosen to adapt a better known Victorian novel there’s the danger that the audience might have been familiar with the book and might therefore already have formed an opinion about it. It suits Kubrick’s purposes to choose a novel that very few people have read.

Thackeray was the inventor of the so-called "novel without a hero” and this is indeed a movie without a hero. Thackeray’s much more famous novel Vanity Fair would have suited Kubrick’s purposes equally well except that it’s too widely known and the audience would have preconceptions about it.

Barry Lyndon is not even a real anti-hero. An anti-hero is someone about whom we have some feelings even if they’re mainly negative. Barry is simply a non-hero. We don’t care enough about him to dislike him and the whole movie is so detached that it’s difficult even to work up disapproval for Barry.

There’s only one character in the movie who could potentially function as a hero, and that’s the young Lord Bullingdon, but he’s almost as unsympathetic as Barry and definitely not the stuff heroes are made of.

The protagonist (played by Ryan O’Neal) starts life as Redmond Barry, an Irishman born into modest respectability but penniless due to the untimely death of his father in a duel. Another duel will be the crucial event that launches Barry on his career (and a third duel will have equally momentous consequences). Barry suffers misfortunes and joins the British army and participates in the Seven Years War (an extraordinary cynical and senseless war brought about by the breathtaking amorality of Frederick the Great and which therefore serves as the ideal background to the story). Barry deserts and ends up in the Prussian service (a byword for brutality). Barry has no intention of remaining a humble soldier. He waits patiently for his chance of escape (he is a man who does not make things happen but he is extremely adept at recognising opportunities when they fall into his lap).

Barry’s fortunes prosper when he teams up with the Chevalier du Balibari (Patrick Magee), a professional gambler and amateur libertine. It has taken a series of betrayals to get Barry into this favourable situation but betrayal comes very easily to him. By the halfway stage of the movie Barry’s lack of morals, his eye for the main chance and a certain amount of luck have propelled him to the top of the social heap. He marries a fabulously wealthy widow. He has everything he ever desired. He has done little to deserve it. In the second half it all starts to fall apart for him, partly through his own flaws and partly through bad luck.

Much nonsense has been written about the supposed miscasting of Ryan O’Neal in the title role. In fact O’Neal is perfectly cast in every way. Barry Lyndon is a man with considerable ambitions and with a talent for opportunism but he has no morality and no beliefs and no personality to speak of. He takes on the colouring of his surroundings. O’Neal’s performance has just the right quality of complete emotional detachment but then in the rare moments that Barry has to display genuine emotion O’Neal rises to the occasion. It’s a perfectly judged performance and it’s obviously exactly what Kubrick wanted.

Marisa Berenson can’t act but that doesn’t matter since her role is more a modelling assignment than an acting job - her task is to look right and she does. She’s part of the decor really.

Hardy Krüger of course can act and he does a fine job as the Prussian Captain Potzdorf who manages to get the better of Barry for a while but is eventually betrayed by him.

Patrick Magee was a Kubrick favourite and he gives another outrageous but wonderful performance as the deplorable Chevalier du Balibari.

It’s often been remarked that almost every scene in this movie looks like a painting. There’s considerable truth to this. It’s a movie that is more a series of striking visual images than a conventional movie. There is a straightforward narrative here but it’s of little importance. No-one could possibly care what Barry’s ultimate fate is going to be. The images don’t serve the story. The story serves the images. Kubrick gets away with it because the images are so incredibly gorgeous. If there’s ever been a more beautiful movie than Barry Lyndon then I’ve yet to see it.

Kubrick was insistent that he wanted to use only natural light. If a scene took place by candlelight then the lighting for that scene would be provided entirely by candlelight. Special lenses and very fast film made it possible to do this and there’s no question that the film not only looks superb, it looks superb in a very distinctive way. It has a look that is quite different from any previous historical epic. Cinematographer John Alcott, set designer Ken Adam and costume designers Ulla-Britt Söderlund and Milena Canonero all won richly deserved Oscars for this movie.

Barry Lyndon is a movie that is worth seeing for its intoxicating images alone. In fact they’re enough to make it a must-see movie. It’s interesting as an epic without a trace of heroism. Like most of Kubrick’s better movies it’s just not like other people’s movies.

It’s an amazing technical achievement but was it really a worthwhile exercise? Was it a movie that was actually worth making? The answer to that pretty much depends on how you feel about Kubrick. If you’re a Kubrick sceptic then Barry Lyndon will probably confirm all your doubts about him. If you’re a Kubrick fan you’ll be overjoyed because this movie is the concentrated essence of Kubrickian film-making. It’s not a movie with anything profound to say. The protagonist sacrifices anyone and anything to achieve his ambitions and then finds that maybe it wasn’t worthwhile after all. Not exactly dazzlingly original. What is profound and original is the way it’s done - the extreme lack of any trace of heroism, the uncompromising refusal to manipulate the audience’s emotional responses or moral judgments and the unique style. I think it’s enough to justify the movie.

And I’m going to highly recommend this one because even if you end up not liking it it’s still one of those movies you have to see at least once.

Dr Strangelove (1964)

My review of Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 nuclear war black comedy, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, posted at Cult Movie Reviews, might be of interest to readers of this blog as well. Here's the link to my review.

sci-fi classics - Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey

I've reviewed two classic science fiction  movies on my Cult Movie Reviews blog. Forbidden Planet is arguably the most admired sci-fi movies of the 1950s while Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is almost certainly the most admired of 1960s sci-fi films, providing a good opportunity for a back-to-back comparison. This is especially so since both movies are available on Blu-Ray and they're movies that really need to be seen in that format.

Here are the links to my reviews - Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey.