The Killers

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #176: Robert Siod­mak’s The Killers; Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Killers; Don Sie­gal’s The Killers.

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple where The Cri­te­ri­on folks are in a posi­tion to pro­vide a unique cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. In addi­tion to Robert Siod­mak’s clas­sic noir, they’ve also pro­vid­ed Andrei Tarkovsky’s first stu­dent film and Don Sie­gal’s made-for-TV but nev­er aired adap­ta­tion; all of the Ernest Hem­ing­way short sto­ry The Killers.

Siod­mak’s treat­ment is still the best of the three. The dia­logue is sharp­er, the pro­duc­tion val­ues less over-wrought, the act­ing of a high­er qual­i­ty than any­thing Don Sie­gal might got­ten in his remake. Even the non-Hem­ing­way por­tions of the film [most of it] are held to a high­er stan­dard and are a bit more palat­able than Sie­gal’s made-for-TV 60s can­dy-corn. That’s not to say that Sie­gal’s ver­sion is a com­plete loss, but with­out Clu Gulager as a hit­man and about two inter­est­ing shots it would have been absolute­ly ter­ri­ble.

Tarkovsky’s short is almost word-for-word to the Hem­ing­way sto­ry and it has ear­ly sparks of his dis­tinct style. The much slow­er pace of this short gives a much rich­er taste to the sce­nario and much more space for thought about the impuls­es which have made this sto­ry so res­o­nant to so many folks. As great as Siod­mak’s adap­ta­tion is, the post-Hem­ing­way dia­logue lacks the punch of the din­er’s hit­men jar­gon. While Sie­gal’s film is the same in essen­tials, the dif­fer­ent par­tic­u­lars make it a bit more bleak since we fol­low the action through the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of the hit­men through­out. Since they’re evil of course they can’t be allowed to make it through the film alive. An inevitabil­i­ty obvi­ous from the start. I haven’t said much about the con­tent of the films them­selves, so I’ll just leave it at say­ing, watch the Siod­mak ver­sion and if you like Clu Gulager, you’ll prob­a­bly be able to sit through Sie­gal’s.

• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Jonathan Lethem [1946]
• The Killers [1946] Film Site review.
• YouTube Trail­er of The Killers [1946]
• Alexan­der Gor­don on The Killers [1958] [He worked on the film as a fel­low stu­dent with Tarkovsky]
• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Geof­frey O’Brien [1964]
• YouTube Trail­er of The Killers [1964]
• The Hem­ing­way short sto­ry.