Review of The Killing (1956) by James A — 03 Oct 2011

An absolute classic. This is Kubrick's first perfect film (in a long line of them- he was cinema's perfectionist) but it is one that makes its audience work for their experience. It is not a showy film and is in fact quite modest, and in the first twenty minutes one might mistake its procedural voice-over and low-key acting for defects.

In fact, Kubrick structures his film in an unusual way, ignoring the typical method for crafting a visual story and instead opting for a climax that begins at second one and doesn't end until the final frame, like a steam engine that gets going and doesn't stop gaining speed until it hits a concrete wall.

When I first saw the film years ago I didn't care for Sterling Hayden's performance; he is a strange actor with a deadly monotonous delivery, and I mistook the casting of him here for a mistake.

Now I see it for what it is. Hayden is a structure, a symbol for intelligent crime, someone who is so hellbent and mechanical that he has literally taken the excitement out of crime- but he is alone. He is the perfect criminal, but Kubrick proves that no man can make it on his own no matter how detached he is, and that is both the gift and the tragedy of human life.

It is the other characters' eccentricities and emotional ties that bring him down, and when he is eventually caught and cornered he gives in, knowing there is no place in this world for him. He is tried his best but he cannot shake the human to human connections that have grounded him and bound him.

Kubrick uses a number of revolutionary technical devices to tell this story including a non-chronological cross-cutting timeline and a constant shift in perspective, never letting us get too wise about how this heist played out.

After all, we too must be aided and then let down by another human being so as best to experience the onscreen birth of Kubrick's pessimism.