We’re back! Post-lockdown, in-person inaugural screening!
“Hemingway’s short story is fleshed out into an incredibly involuted screenplay, which Siodmak renders as the ultimate noir dreamscape. The Citizen Kane of crime movies.”
Classics from Hollywood's Golden Age are always TPFC crowd-pleasers so it's perhaps no surprise that this classic film noir won our members' vote of what film we'd resume our in-person screenings with.
Burt Lancaster made his screen debut as washed-up boxer turned hitman victim Ole ‘Swede’ Andreson, and was catapulted to instant stardom - not least for the screen chemistry that he showed opposite sultry Ava Gardner, whose Kitty Collins is the very personification of the femme fatale.
German émigré Robert Siodmak was one of the filmmakers who helped create film noir, and Elwood Bredell’s high-contrast cinematography elevates the film far above a conventional crime drama. But even on that level it’s a first-rate demonstration of how to maintain narrative tension, with the flashback structure withholding crucial details until almost the very end. Ernest Hemingway claimed this expansion of his typically taut short story was the first adaptation of his work he really admired. And ‘Papa’ was a hard man to please…
Please note: as we ease back into things post-lockdown, seat reservations are mandatory.
Related links
The Killers by Ernest Hemingway - the original short story (PDF)
The Killers: The Citizen Kane of Noir - Criterion Collection essay by Jonathan Lethem
