Review of The Killing (1956) by Dalia D — 23 May 2008

The Killing is a fun-to-watch film, a kind of horse-race noir in which an incredibly well-planned robbery of a racetrack goes all according to plan, until it's foiled at the end by the gun-wielding boyfriend of the spoiled femme fatale wife of the nervous and victimized track clerk, who's in on the robbery as the one who opens the employees-only door for the robber in exchange for a big cut of the take, with which he hopes to finally satisfy said femme fatale wife. In that way, one would think that all the other characters fall away, but we also follow a number of amusing side plots, which lead up to the dramatic end, when, after everyone but the actual robber has been serendipitously (for him, of course) killed, he stuffs all the cash into a giant suitcase and tries to carry it onto a plane with his girlfriend. As those airline bastards are wont to do, they force him to check his bag due to its size and, on its way to the cargo hold, a little dog runs onto the tarmac, causing the cargo driver to stop short, the suitcase to tumble to the ground, and the million dollars to go up in a delightful whirlwind. The moral? The same as all old movies: Crime doesn't pay, of course, and Never trust a broad.

So what makes this one identifiable as Kubrick? Nothing as much as in Paths of Glory (although there is a similar sour chord struck in the soundtrack during the opening credits, when the name "Kubrick" flashes up onto the screen, as if the director had chosen his identity before he was ready to make it known to the public), although there is an obsessive fastidiousness (and more the Kubrick kind than, say, the Hitchcock kind). The sad, soured morality we find in Paths of Glory precursing the same in future films is lacking in this noir, because noir doesn't lend itself to that kind of existential nobody-wins scenario: either the bad guy gets caught (for the triumph of "good"), or the bad guy gets away with it (for the triumph of lawlessness).