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| Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, ‘The Killers’ (1946). |
By Paul Parcellin
“The Killers” (1946)
Some say “The Killers” is the “Citizen Kane” of noir, but how can that be?
One is a beloved noir, the story behind a brutal murder of a washed up prizefighter. The other, a fictional biography of a media tycoon, loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. It’s like comparing doughnuts with dirigibles, isn't it?
Not exactly. The key to their kinship is the way the two films tell their stories.
Here’s the rundown on 'The Killers':
The violent death of the Swede (Burt Lancaster) in the first dozen minutes or so of “The Killers” launches an investigation. But it's the preamble to the murder that draws us in. It starts when two hitmen come looking for Swede at the diner he’s known to haunt.
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| Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Harry Hayden, ‘The Killers.’ |
They terrorize the staff and a young customer and announce that they’re going kill the former boxer turned filling station attendant. The customer, Nick Adams (Phil Brown), gets to Swede’s rooming house before the killers do, but his warning to the condemned man is pointless.
“Once, I did something wrong,” Swede tells the youthful Adams.
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| The Swede (Lancaster) awaits dark visitors. |
Swede doesn’t budge, but instead awaits the inevitable as the gunmen creep up the stairs. He grips the bedpost until the two torpedos burst in and fire. In one of noir's most famous close-ups, we see his grasp on the post release as his life slips away.
Based, in part, on a Hemingway short story
The film is based on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same title. The opening sequence in the diner is faithful to the book, but the rest of the script is original material. The screenplay was written by Richard Brooks and then heavily re-worked by Anthony Veiller and his frequent collaborator John Huston. Only Veiller is credited on the final film. Huston went uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros.
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| Everett Sloane, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Ellen Lowe, ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941). |
Hemingway’s part of the story, just the tip of the iceberg, is the culmination of a years-long series of events. The bulk of the film, which explains what led to the murder, owes a lot to “Citizen Kane” (1941). In both strikingly similar films an investigator pieces together the story a deceased man, around whom a mystery swirls.
Investigator steps in, post mortem
After newspaper publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies of natural causes at an advanced age, newsreel company reporter pokes his nose into Kane’s life, interviewing those who knew him best.
Swede’s death barely captures the attention of local law enforcement. The only one interested is insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), who needs to find a mystery woman who’s due to collect the payout from Swede’s life insurance policy.
Cryptic final utterances
Both Kane and Swede utter puzzling last words just before they die, and both films involve a quest to find the meaning of those words. Swede’s “Once, I did something wrong,” contrasts with Kane’s short and sweet one-word finale, “Rosebud.” It turns out Kane’s last gasped syllables are packed with delicious meaning and irony (which I won’t go into here lest I dish out two spoilers for the price of one).
Both stories are told in a series of flashbacks, a noir staple, that we see as each interviewee spills his or her chunk of the story. All of the fragmented, nonlinear pieces coalesce into complete, or near complete, portraits of the two men.
Witnesses speak, but are they reliable?
Mind you, there’s good reason to question the reliability some of the witness’s accounts of the facts. Yet both films seem to take those recollections at face value, each building toward a revelation about those cryptic last words both men spoke.
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| Edmond O'Brien, Ann Staunton, 'The Killers.' |
Reardon figures out what Swede meant about his doing “something wrong.” It isn’t like the Sphinx-like riddle that the newsreel reporter is tasked with unscrambling. He discovers a richly detailed story of Kane, but never finds out what “Rosebud” means, and he gives up, defeated.
A revealing view of Kane's clutter
But when the camera takes a God's-eye view of the grim cleanup of Kane’s earthly possession, we see the humble object, which obviously held great symbolic importance to the fabulously wealthy media magnate, and occupied his final thoughts. It’s as sad and touching a moment as you’re likely to see on screen, describing the core of the man and what drove him forward in his remarkable life.
A mountain and a molehill? Perhaps not
The Swede’s story, tragic as it is, isn't as broad in scope as the newspaper mogul’s sprawling, tainted saga. It’s a gritty story of a wounded, gullible has-been who was putty in the hands of a gorgeous, evil woman (Kane had his women problems, too). But, so what? “The Killers” is top shelf noir that set a standard for the classic era of films like it.
And as it turns out, both Swede and Kane also had this in common: Despite living widely disparate lives, both men, once mighty, go out lonely and haunted, not with a clap of thunder but with a whimper.
