The Killing [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Overview

The Killing is an intense, dark mystery which explores man's fallibility and how plans fall apart due to greed, corruption and human error. Small-time criminal, ex-convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) along with his partners, plans and successfully pulls off a race-track robbery. The get-away is complicated by a murder, and a scheming woman, Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) who pits the men against each other. Director Stanley Kubrick employs a raw, nervy narrative style, using flash-forwards and flash-backs, which, while interesting, sometimes seem overly complicated and forced. Despite this, Kubrick's unusual visual sense, which he will later develop to stunning effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is strikingly apparent. This film, well acted, particularly by Sterling Hayden, and Marie Windsor, as the scheming, unfaithful wife and strikingly directed, is an interesting experiment with the film noir style. The Killing will also be of interest to fans of Kubrick as he begins his exploration of the fallibility of "fail-safe" devices which he developed so eloquently in the extraordinary, hilarious Dr. Strangelove.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/16/2011
UPC:	0715515085618
Original Release:	1956
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:24:00
Sales rank:	8,428

Special Features

Video interview with producer James B. Harris; Excerpted interviews with actor Sterling Hayden from the French television series Cin?ma cin?mas; Video interview with poet and author Robert Polito about writer Jim Thompson; Restored high-definition digital transfer of Stanley Kubrick's 1955 noir feature Killer's Kiss; New video appreciation of Killer's Kiss featuring film critic Geoffrey O'Brien; Trailers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Sterling Hayden	Johnny Clay
Coleen Gray	Fay
Vince Edwards	Val Cannon,Black Man
Jay C. Flippen	Marvin Unger
Marie Windsor	Sherry Peatty
Ted de Corsia	Randy Kennan
Elisha Cook Jr.	George Peatty
Joe Sawyer	Mike O'Reilly
Timothy Carey	Nikki Arane
Jay Adler	Leo
Joseph Turkel	Tiny,Tiny
Maurice Oboukhoff	Kola Kwarian
Billy Benedict	Airline Clerk
Rodney Dangerfield	Actor
Tito Vuolo	Actor
Dorothy Adams	Actor
Herbert Ellis	Actor
Mary Carroll	Actor
James Griffith	Actor
Kola Kwarian	Maurice Oboukhoff
Steve Mitchell	Actor
Robert Williams	Actor
Gerald Fried	Composer

Technical Credits

Stanley Kubrick

Jim Thompson

James B. Harris	Producer
Stanley Kubrick	Screenwriter
Jim Thompson	Screenwriter
David Koehler	Special Effects
Earl Snyder	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Stanley Kubrick's third feature showed that he was no ordinary director, as he dispensed with traditional time structure to detail the planning and execution of a racetrack heist gone wrong. Combining a non-linear story with a unifying, matter-of-fact voice-over narration, Kubrick constructed an intricate yet lucid cinematic puzzle that shifted back and forth both in time and among the central characters, revealing the personal stakes for each participant by following their individual actions leading up to the fateful seventh race. Johnny the leader thinks he has it all under control, but, in true Kubrick fashion, his plan is not immune to human failure. While the fractured time frame and use of long takes and tracking shots signaled Kubrick's stylistic break from classical form, the sharp black-and-white photography, Marie Windsor's insidious femme fatale, and Sterling Hayden's doomed Johnny place The Killing in the mode of 1940s/1950s film noir. His first film made on a reasonable budget and with an established cast of pros, The Killing caught critics' attention and established Kubrick as a director to watch, especially for such future cinematic time-tricksters as Quentin Tarantino.