"I did something wrong. Once."

Some of you will probably remember last January, when I screened the German silent film Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday).


Although that was wholly a German film; written directed and produced by Germans, filmed in Berlin and starring ordinary German citizens, it stands today as The Ghost of Hollywood Future. Virtually everyone involved on the creative side of Menschen am Sonntag eventually went on to wield an outsize role in Hollywood as it was to be.

We have just seen Double Indemnity, written and directed by Billy Wilder...


And before that we saw Detour, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. This week, we are going to be visiting the other director of Menschen am Sonntag.


Spoiler alert: we're going to be seeing quite a bit of Robert Siodmak over the next couple of months, because his "noir" offerings tend to be especially stylish and juicy. But this one in particular is almost as iconic as Double Indemnity.


In 1933, Claude Rains earned himself a place in the history books by becoming the first actor (and possibly the only actor) not to appear in his own film debut.

Claude Rains makes his cinema debut, but you can't see it...


Burt Lancaster's screen debut (in The Killers) is almost as noteworthy: his character is murdered approximately ten minutes into the film (and two-and-a-half minutes after he makes his first appearance).

Burt Lancaster makes his first ever screen appearance...

And no, that is not a spoiler.

The "Killers" of the title are a pair of hired gunmen who roll into a sleepy out-of-the-way town with instructions to take out an apparently insignificant gas station attendant. This they proceed to do with brutal efficiency.

...and Burt Lancaster is murdered, two minutes later.

The rest of the film follows the efforts of an insurance investigator (played by Edmond O'Brien) as he tries to understand who this gas-pump jockey really was, and why anyone would want him dead.


There are so many screen legends in The Killers, it's sometimes hard to remember that none of them were particularly noteworthy at the time of the film's release. Burt Lancaster had been a circus performer up to this point, and Ava Gardner, in her first starring role, had only appeared in bit parts (usually without screen credit) before this film. Edmond O'Brien and Sam Levene were both dependable character actors, but weren't box office draws by any means. And Charles McGraw and William Conrad (the "killers" of the title) were both at the anonymous beginnings of long and distinguished careers.


In fact, the biggest and most recognisable name in this entire production was actually the author of the source material: Ernest Hemmingway. (Which is probably why his name appears three times on the original poster...)

Like so many aspects of Hemmingway's life, his contribution to The Killers is somewhat overblown. The film is based on a short story he wrote in 1927, but that story only covers the events of the first ten minutes of the film. The rest of the screenplay is completely original, and very, very noir.

Like so many other "dark" films of the era (including every single film I have screened thus far) it begins at the end, so there is absolutely no ambiguity about the ultimate doom of the protagonist.

He's going to die. You know that, because you just saw it. It's kind of the title of the film...

And then there's Ava Gardner.


When you do a Google search for the term Femme Fatale, one of the first images you're going to be shown is Ava Gardner from The Killers (go ahead; try it... I'll wait).

Like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Ava Gardner gives an unforgettable performance as the archetypal "temptress", positively dripping with sexuality and allure. Which is all the more interesting because for much of the film her "presentation" is actually quite low key. 


She may be the object of everyone's desire, but that doesn't mean she needs to be an "object" in the pornographic sense. The only scene where she truly presents as a sex object is her initial appearance, where there is no doubt about one specific male's gaze.

Have you seen that ubiquitous (and viral) internet meme of the boyfriend with the wandering eye?


Burt and Eva (and Virginia Christine) beat them to it by seventy-one years.


But then that was the bread and butter of so many films noir: a character (not exclusively male) makes a bad decision. They choose the wrong path; they fall for the wrong person; they do the wrong thing. And the tragedy is on.


As Burt Lancaster says at the very beginning of the film: "I did something wrong. Once."

The Killers is not the first film noir and it wasn't remotely the last. But there are few others that encapsulate the "noir" mindset quite as perfectly.


And by the way, the music...

We will screen The Killers (sorry: Ernest Hemmingway's The Killers!) at 7.30 on Thursday, the 6th of February at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.

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