190. The Killers (1946)

Directed by Robert Siodmak

Synopsis

A guy gets murdered in a small town, the insurance guy pursues the why and wherefore of his killing, unravelling a conspiracy involving a theft of a hat factory!

Review

This was actually one of the best film noirs that I've seen in a while, the plot was tight, the characters were believable and it was quite a lot of fun to watch. The technique of slowly unravelling the story by showing you flashbacks in no chronological order, a la Pulp Fiction is actually quite effective.

We return to the glamorous and exciting world of insurance companies here, we had been here before with Double Indemnity but this tackles in quite a different way, no one from the insurance company is actually involved in any of the murders. There's just a guy there who is intrigued.

Burt Lancaster has his first role here, and really it couldn't have been better, it is a pretty good film to start in with top billing playing against Ava Gardner... not bad mister Lancaster. Good Film.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The first twenty minutes of the film, showing the arrival of the two contract killers, and the murder of Anderson, is a very close adaptation of Hemingway's short story. The rest of the film, showing Reardon's investigation of the murder, is wholly original. The Killers was the first, and to date the only, adaptation of a Hemingway work to leave successfully intact the author's laconic dialogue. According to Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker, The Killers "was the first film from any of his works that Ernest could genuinely admire."

Producer Mark Hellinger paid $36,750 for the screen rights to Hemingway's story, his first independent production. The screenplay was written by John Huston, uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros., and Richard Brooks.

Lancaster wasn't his first pick for the part of "the Swede," but Warner Bros. wouldn't lend out actor Wayne Morris for the film. Others considered for the part included Van Heflin, Jon Hall, Sonny Tufts, and Edmund O'Brien, who was instead cast in the role of the insurance investigator. In the role of the femme fatale, Kitty Collins, Hellinger cast Gardner, who had appeared virtually unnoticed in a string of minor films

Trailer: