The Killing

The word that occurs to me in describing Kubrick's approach to Johnny and the film, is "control." That may suggest the link between this first mature feature and Kubrick's later films, so varied and brilliant.

Stanley Kubrick was always infatuated with human clockwork, both in terms of what makes each of us tick and how we choreograph our lives, deaths, and sins. The Killing, his big heist movie, suits this obsession perfectly. It is often considered, and rightly, his first masterpiece.

Orson Welles was so taken with this film that after seeing it he declared Kubrick could do no wrong; not to be missed.

Forty years later, The Killing has lost little of its punch. It's both vintage '50s noir and a stunning introduction to a killer director. [22 Jul 1998, p.L]

Centering on a racetrack robbery, it has fast, incisive cutting; a nervous, edgy style; and furtive little touches of characterization.

If anything identifies The Killing as a Kubrick picture, it is the movie’s overall sense of fatalism – even as we watch how carefully things are planned, there is a sense of impending doom.

Though The Killing is composed of familiar ingredients and it calls for fuller explanations, it evolves as a fairly diverting melodrama.

Stanley Kubrick's mid '50s coming-out party is a startlingly accurate prediction of cinema's future. By way of a non-linear narration and a few remarkably fresh transitions, Kubrick adds weight and magnitude to a tangled heist tale and its focus on the crooks behind the slick, daring stickup of a local racetrack. Confused by the film's radical new approach to storytelling, test audiences hated the first cut, leading to studio meddling and an almost-complete evaporation of its marketing budget. Kubrick fought back, though, and with the obvious exception of a horribly heavy-handed, deadpan narration, the finished product seems virtually unblemished. Mostly concerned with the planning and hand-wringing before the big theft, The Killing slowly builds tension and anticipation before finally boiling over in a machine gun-paced robbery scene, terse payoff and all-too-brief elaboration on the major players' ultimate fates. Acceptably acted at best, the real stars of this picture are the complex plot and the harvest of fresh ideas going on behind the lens. A clear inspiration for Tarantino's big hits of the '90s, it's a daring and stylish major market debut for the famed director that hints at the directions his development would ultimately carry the medium.

Un polar minutieusement détaillé et bien construit qui m’a fait penser à ‘Ocean 11’ mais avec quelques participants en moins… Le démarrage reste lent cependant et quelques bavardages particulièrement inutiles et rasoirs viennent alourdir cette belle mécanique, par ailleurs filmée consciencieusement par Kubrick mais sans génie : ne pas s’attendre à sa maestria des films suivants. A ce sujet, quel contraste avec ‘Les Sentiers de la Gloire’ sorti l’année d’après ! On note la présence dans le rôle-titre de Sterling Hayden très convaincant ici et qui le sera encore plus (dans un petit rôle certes mais très percutant) dans l’inénarrable ‘Docteur Folamour’ des années plus ****… Assurément très sérieux, ce polar n’a donc rien de bien extraordinaire si ce n’est… sa fin d’une ironie inattendue ! on retrouve là le Kubrick narquois et sardonique à souhait. Quelle fin, mes aïeux, elle sauve le film ! (ou presque).