The Killing

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
(1956)

Even with a relatively small filmography, the early work of Stanley Kubrick still finds itself the victim of neglect. It is no exaggeration to claim that most people couldn't name a film of his preceding Dr. Strangelove or Lolita, let alone to have watched one. How unfortunate, in that his debut full-length feature film, The Killing, captures a future legend's rather humble, but obviously capable beginnings.

A heist in the heart of noir, The Killing unfolds with a team of criminals' plans to stick a (horse) racetrack for $2 million. Through schemes involving bullheaded thuggery, inside connections, a corrupt policeman, as well as both keen precision and timing, the collective lays out a complex but seemingly foolproof plan. Of course, with the essence of every film noir being humanity's exploration into its self-defeating heart of darkness, there exists a foil to the mugs' full realization of happiness in the jackpot. In archetypal fashion, the foil shows itself as the greedy broad of one of the men involved in the heist - she, having her own ideas as to where the shares of the loot shall be allocated.

The Killing can be seen as comparatively conventional by Kubrick's standards. Though this may be in part due to the suits at MGM, who undoubtedly had a heavy influence on the final cut, and to whom Kubrick was surely too green to give the finger to at the time. Other traces of probable studio meddling can be found in the overly-explanatory narrator, melodramatic acting, and the shamelessly cheap recycling of footage - reoccurring two to three times throughout the film.

But the roots Kubrick's cinematic vision are in place. From a technical standpoint, some great tracking shots are present, seamlessly transferring between the separate rooms of a building; shots of this nature would become the director's trademark in later films such as Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick also pulls off what is perhaps one of the more difficult techniques to authentically execute in the moving POV shot, as a wounded character stumbles through the unreal aftermath of bullet-ridden corpses from a deal gone bad - a grisly realistic scene, even in black and white. This first-person styled camera work most notably reappears at the end of The Shining, where poor Danny attempts to outrun a sadistic, hatchet-wielding Jack Nicholson through a maze of snowy hedges: a likewise surreal setting, infused with a disquieting tangibility that is effectively achieved by shifting the viewer's perspective to that which is no longer objective and removed.

Regardless of its conventionality, The Killing altogether entertains, being a fair degree grittier than what the genre normally produced. And as a precursor to the director's notorious later investigations into the darker avenues of life, the conventions of the classic film noir, restrictive as they may be, thus provided Kubrick with a choice foundation from which to expand upon.