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By PAUL BRENNER
The folks at The Criterion Collection have outdone themselves with this two-disc Killerpalooza.
Two feature films, a radio show, a Russian student film, and an audio reading -- all spawned from the original short
story by Ernest Hemingway. The showpiece of Disc 1 is Robert Siodmak's hardboiled ("Don't ask a dying man to lie his way
to hell") noir classic from 1946, vaulting from an almost verbatim transposition of the short story into a "Citizen
Kane" land of shadowy flashbacks as true blue insurance investigator Edmond O'Brien unravels the reason why the doomed
Swede (Burt Lancaster) willingly accepts death at the hands of two sinister, though characterless, assassins named Al
and Max. O'Brien uncovers a Stygian trail of deception, murder, and passion, ultimately engineered by voluptuous femme
fatale Ava Gardner, whom Lancaster falls for like Sinatra. Siodmak is in his element with an evocative cinematography of
gloom and fluid traveling shots, including a one-shot tracking shot of a robbery.
A snatch of the Henry Mancini score for "Touch of Evil" over the Universal logo, pilfered by Johnny Williams, beckons
viewers to Don Siegel's 1964 version of "The Killers" (the main attraction of Disc 2), which trounces on Hemingway's
story to deliver a bleak missive on the post-Kennedy Assassination cultural state of a tone deaf Super Power. The dark
noir streets of Siodmak have given way to the bright and garish lighting of a Hollywood studio set ("The Killers" was
supposed to have been the first made-for-television feature film but ultimately deemed too violent by NBC to be given
the honor). In the Siegel world, there is a criminal justice vacuum -- the police are not only ineffective, they don't
exist. Siegel's nihilism explodes in the opening sequence with the hired killers, Charlie and Lee (Lee Marvin and Clu
Gulager), wreaking havoc in a school for the blind (Charlie and Lee are the only ones wearing dark glasses) as they hunt
down John Cassavetes and dispatch him with a few pre-Peckinpah slo-mo shots. Now it is Lee Marvin, one of the killers,
who determines to discover why Cassavetes met his maker so stoically. In this version, the flashbacks become disturbing
rather than moody. How else to describe Norman Fell's sweaty head in a steam machine or Ronald Reagan backslapping Angie
Dickinson? Meanwhile, Clu Gulager in shades strolls through the film as Siegel's mascot, anticipating all of
post-modernist noir from Quentin Tarantino to Agent Smith of "The Matrix." The difference between Siodmak and Siegel is
the difference between an attitude and a way of life.
The extras are glorious. Prominent among them is Andrei Tarkovsky's 1956 student film of Hemingway's tale. Stacy Keach
is heard on an audio track reading the original short story and the Screen Directors' Playhouse version of 1948 can also
be heard. Film scholar and Don Siegel look-alike Stuart Kaminsky comments on the two versions of "The Killers" and Clu
Gulager reflects on working on the Siegel version. Also included are essays by Jonathan Lethem and Geoffrey O'Brien,
biographies, publicity for the two films, Siodmak trailers, an audio reading from the chapter in Don Siegel's
autobiography on "The Killers," Paul Schrader's influential "Notes on Film Noir," and Siegel memos. Both films come with
isolated music and effects tracks. |
