Avengers of the Underworld

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Movie
German title Avengers of the Underworld
Original title The killers
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1946
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Robert Siodmak
script Anthony Veiller
John Huston (anonymous)
Richard Brooks (anonymous) based
on a short story by Ernest Hemingway
production Mark Hellinger
music Miklós Rózsa
camera Elwood Bredell
cut Arthur Hilton
occupation
synchronization

Avengers of the Underworld (original title: The Killers , German alternative title: Die Killer ) is an American film by Robert Siodmak from 1946. The first act of the film, in which the ex-boxer Ole "The Swede" Anderson victims of two Assassin is based on Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killer . From the second act onwards, insurance detective Reardon investigates the reasons for Anderson's death on the basis of testimony presented in flashbacks and learns that the femme fatale Kitty Collins played a disastrous role in his fate. The Killers is a prime example of film noir , both visually and formally . For the leading actors Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, the film marked the starting point of their careers. The Killers was nominated for four Academy Awards and established Robert Siodmak as one of the leading Hollywood directors of the 1940s.

action

1946: Two hit men arrive in Brentwood, New Jersey , waiting at Henry's Diner for Ole "The Swede" Anderson, who works at a gas station, to arrive. When he does not appear, they go to his pension. The Swede, warned by his colleague Nick Adams, makes no move to flee. He explains to Nick: "I did something wrong - once". The killers shoot the Swede.

Insurance detective Reardon is investigating the murder after the Swede had taken out life insurance for $ 2,500 in favor of housekeeper Mary Ellen Daugherty. He learns from Nick Adams that a few days earlier the Swede had met a stranger at the gas station - the viewer later learns that it is the gang boss "Big Jim" Colfax - and has not come to work since, but called in sick would have. Reardon visits Miss Daugherty, who works in a hotel in Atlantic City . She remembers that six years ago - in 1940 - the Swede tried to commit suicide in the hotel because he had been abandoned by the woman he had been there with for a few days. References to a previous boxing career of the Swede lead Reardon to Sam Lubinsky, a police officer and childhood friend of the Swede. Lubinsky tells Reardon about the Swede's last boxing match in 1935, when he had injured his hand so badly that he had to give up his career. Lilly Lubinsky, Sam's wife, reports that she was the Swede's girlfriend at the time, but that he had got involved with criminals and that Kitty Collins, the lover of the gang boss Colfax, had fallen for. Sam's second memory relates to an event in 1938: The Swede had himself arrested for Kitty and sentenced to prison by taking the blame for a theft Kitty actually committed.

At the Swede's funeral, Reardon meets Charleston, the Swede's former cellmate. In two flashbacks, he tells how the Swede was obsessed with Kitty during the prison period from 1938 to 1940, only having her handkerchief as a memento, how he introduced the Swedes to Colfax after the two were released and how the Swede agreed to take part in a robbery, Blinded by Kitty's presence and not knowing that Colfax and Kitty are a couple. Reardon discovers that the robbery was the theft of the Prentiss Hat Company payroll in Hackensack ; his boss Kenyon uses a newspaper report to tell the story of the crime in the eighth flashback of the film. Reardon is summoned by Sam Lubinsky to a hospital where Blinky, one of Colfax's gang, is dying. In delirium, Blinky tells of the eve of the robbery, when the Swede and Colfax had an argument, then of the evening of the day of the robbery when the Swede arrived at the gang's meeting point - which was changed at short notice without the Swede's knowledge -, declared that he had been cheated and took all the looted money.

Reardon returns to the Swede's pension room. There he meets Dum-Dum, another gang member who is looking for the stolen money he suspects there. After a scuffle, Dum-Dum escapes. Reardon visits Colfax, who is now a respectable businessman, but Colfax denies involvement in the crime. The detective manages to get in touch with Kitty. They meet at the Green Cat nightclub . In the last flashback of the film, Kitty tells of how she visited the Swede the night before the attack, warned him that the gang was trying to cheat him, and encouraged him to trick his accomplices in return. Reardon realizes that it was a double fraud, planned long in advance by Colfax and his lover Kitty, in order to get all the money themselves and to be able to blame the Swede. The two killers appear in the Green Cat to kill Reardon, but Sam Lubinsky shoots them both. Kitty flees. Reardon, Lubinsky, and several police officers rush to Colfax's house. You will find Dum-Dum there, shot by Colfax, and the dying Colfax. The two had fought a gunfight when Dum-Dum realized that he had been deceived by his boss. Kitty, increasingly hysterical, begs Colfax to relieve her, but the dying gang boss admits the truth and thereby also accuses Kitty.

Reardon returns to his boss's office. He notes that the only consequence of clearing up the case is a minimal drop in insurance premiums by a tenth of a cent.

History of origin

Script and preproduction

Mark Hellinger, a former journalist and Broadway producer who was known for his glamorous and excessive lifestyle and who was said to have contacts with the underworld, worked for Warner Bros. as a screenwriter (including The Roaring Twenties , 1939) and producer (including Night on the road , 1940) before working as a freelance producer on his first independent production for Universal Studios . For this he bought the film rights to Hemingway's short story The Killer for $ 36,750 . John Huston co-wrote and directed the script with Richard Brooks and Anthony Veiller, but a difference of opinion arose between Huston and Hellinger. Huston, who was under contract with Warner, was - like Brooks - not mentioned in the credits of The Killers . Hellinger finally hired Robert Siodmak to film the story. Siodmak had with the movies searched witness ( Phantom Lady , 1943), Christmas holidays ( Christmas Holiday , 1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry ( The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry , 1945) and The spiral staircase ( The Spiral Staircase , 1945) at Universal already made a name for himself as a director of “black” crime and suspense films.

For the male lead, Burt Lancaster was hired, an inexperienced actor who had only appeared on Broadway for three weeks in the play The Sound of Hunting . The female lead actress Ava Gardner also had little experience in acting roles. She was under contract with MGM and only appeared as a starlet in a number of supporting roles until she prevailed against rivals such as Dorothy Comingore , Audrey Totter , Leslie Brooks and Pamela Britton for the role of Kitty in The Killers and was loaned by MGM to Universal . The budget for the film was $ 875,000.

production

Filming location of The Killers : The Universal Studios

The filming took place from the end of April to June 28, 1946 on the premises of Universal Studios. For the long sequence of the robbery, Siodmak used the Universal employee parking lot as a filming location. The scene, which was realized with a camera crane traveling on a dolly , was shot three times. Siodmak used the first take , which contained some mishaps caused by disoriented actors, to give the scene a more realistic impression. Another location was the Hollywood Legion Stadium , where the Swede's boxing match was filmed with 2000 extras.

The two inexperienced actors had to rely on the help of veterans Siodmak and Hellinger. Ava Gardner remembers Hellinger's support: “Mark saw me as an actress, not a sex bomb . He trusted me from the beginning and I trusted him. ”And through Siodmak:“ Siodmak helped me with my toughest scene, the one at the end […]. [He] let me repeat them until I got really hysterical and delivered a more convincing presentation than I would have ever thought. ”Even the sometimes uncertain Lancaster had to repeat some scenes up to 15 times before a satisfactory result was achieved.

There were differences of opinion between Hellinger and Siodmak about the dramaturgical direction and the style of the film. Hellinger was concerned, on the one hand, whether the construction of the film from flashbacks would work or whether the viewer would not be overwhelmed by the changing time levels. On the other hand, Hellinger wanted to give the film a much more realistic style and interpret it more like a documentary like a news broadcast. Coming from journalism, he wanted to put a sensational punchline or a striking headline in every scene. In the end, Siodmak largely prevailed by increasing the realistic effect of the pictures through the expressive use of light. Siodmak's habit of cutting in the camera while filming , i.e. providing the producer and the film editor with little and precisely planned, shot film material, further reduced Hellinger's influence on the finished film.

reception

Publication and contemporary criticism

The film began distribution in the US on August 30, 1946. In the first week, the film grossed $ 65,456 and was a hit with the public that brought in the production costs by far.

The criticism was very benevolent of The Killers - which is unusual for one of the crime films that it otherwise despises . Manny Farber called the film in The New Republic : “A production that is charged with tension and exciting down to the smallest details in the background. The solid documentary style, the garish melodramatic aftertaste, the craftsmanship (best seen in the scenes modeled from darkness and light) are mainly due to director Robert Siodmak ”. Herb Sterne wrote in Rob Wagner's Script on September 28, 1946: “Director Robert Siodmak and cinematographer Woody Bredell have done an excellent job of keeping the […] story taut, and the result is well worth going to the cinema. Hard, rough and dirty, the film never compromises on its subject matter. " Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times of September 28, 1946 that the film was “maybe not exactly what Hemingway had in mind,” but that the “rather cruel, complicated plot” was “cleverly told” by the flashbacks, the film "entertaining". Lancaster makes his debut as a “lanky and melancholy portrayal of the nice boy who is lured into his ruin”, Gardner plays “sensual and smug”.

The Killers opened in German cinemas on October 16, 1950. The criticism in the Federal Republic, used to the conventional narrative style of German post-war films, reacted rather negatively to the film. The Tagesspiegel ruled on January 28, 1951 that the many flashbacks were "detrimental to the flow of the plot". Christ und Welt also criticized the film structure; the flashbacks made "an already implausible film even more confused".

Awards

The Killers was nominated for four Oscars at the 1947 Academy Awards: Best Director (Robert Siodmak), Best Editing (Arthur Hilton), Best Score ( Miklós Rózsa), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Anthony Veiller). In all four categories, however, the award went to William Wyler's melodrama The Best Years of Our Life . In the Edgar Award winning The Killers in 1947 the prize for Best Film.

In 2008 the film was entered into the National Film Registry .

Classification and evaluation

Heinzlmeier, Menningen and Schulz describe The Killers as a “showpiece of the middle phase of film noir” , vinegar even as the “quintessence of film noir” . Werner emphasizes the high level of stylistic confidence that Siodmak achieved with this film; he is "equally virtuosic handling achieved an amazing uniformity of themes and a style of cinematography, editing, decor, lighting, sound and music." Gifford called The Killers the "probably the best screen adaptation of a Hemingway story" .

Dickos emphasizes the stylistic qualities of the first act and explains their exemplary value for the film noir itself: "The cinematographic code of light and darkness, the threat, the violence, and an unknown past from which one can no longer escape, and the feeling of inescapable doom, all of this is written in the first twelve minutes of the film. " Steinbauer-Grötsch adds with regard to the opening scenes of the film: " Robert Siodmak set the visual standard in The Killers for the following film noirs: The characters of the two Murderers are transformed into shadowy black silhouettes, into mythical messengers of death that appear out of nowhere and then disappear again after the crime. "

Bould also refers to the style-forming properties of Siodmak's film and notes that he is "in fact the invention of the low-key style in film noir [...] and a compendium of film noir plots." Gross judges the formative influence of the Killers noir in the world view of the film: "as dark as black as in the Killers, the world was never drawn before - and only once after that: in touch of Evil by Orson Welles . also rotated for Universal [...]" This radically Shadoian also emphasizes pessimistic quality: “The Killers leads to the bottom. There is only the way up. "

Aftermath

Siodmak became one of Hollywood's most respected directors with the success of The Killers . Hellinger gave him a 46 Cadillac in gratitude for the success ; Siodmak's weekly rental at Universal rose to $ 2,100. He became Universal's lead in-house director for half a decade, as would later be Douglas Sirk for the 1950s and Alfred Hitchcock for the 1960s. 1946 it declared the magazine Fame for Champion of Champions director , and he became so expensive even for Universal that you lent him quite often for large sums of money to other studios.

Siodmak combined elements of the European film tradition with American motifs in The Killers . His mixture of expressive lighting and realistic elements in connection with a tough crime story is considered to be a style-developing element for the film noir of the later phase. Although Siodmak never had the right to the final cut , he created a great deal of authoritative freedom by working with independent producers like Hellinger and counteracting constraints by, for example, editing "in the camera" in order to preserve his work as artistic as possible. Clarens says: "The Siodmak style was a variant of European realism that combined authentic-looking studio work with real locations, and recorded in a highly artificial way."

The consistent disregard for a chronologically linear narrative in The Killers became the model for many neo-noirs such as Reservoir Dogs , Traffic or Memento . Also, The Usual Suspects uses a narrative situation as in The Killers : The protagonist is killed at the beginning of the film and rolled up his story in flashback. While Hemingway's short story served as the basis for film adaptations several times (such as Andrei Tarkowski's student film Ubiizy and Don Siegel's The Death of a Killer , which took up the flashback structure of The Killers but told the story of the victim from the perspective of one of the killers), The Killers himself quotes and parodies: Carl Reiner used material from Siodmak's film for dead wear no plaids .

In 1958 Siodmak tried to profit again from the success of the film when he directed two pilot films for a - later not realized - television series called Die Killer in Bavaria Film . Siodmak told the Times in 1959 that the content of the pilot films had nothing to do with the 1946 film; he chose the series name because it was a " good title" that is also now in the public domain .

synchronization

Avengers of the Underworld was dubbed in 1950 at Ultra Film Synchron GmbH under the dubbing direction of Alfred Vohrer .

role actor German Dubbing voice
Ole "The Swede" Anderson Burt Lancaster Curt Ackermann
Kitty Collins Ava Gardner Eva Vaitl
Jim Reardon Edmond O'Brien Paul Klinger
"Big Jim" Colfax Albert Dekker Wolfgang Eichberger
Sam Lubinsky Sam Levene Werner Lieven
Lilly Harmon Lubinsky Virginia Christine Ruth Killer
"Dum Dum" Clarke Jack Lambert Wolfgang Preiss
Al Charles McGraw Wolf Ackva
Max William Conrad Hans Hinrich
"Blinky" Franklin Jeff Corey Bum Kruger

Film analysis

Staging

Visual style

Lighting

Although Siodmak's work in Germany cannot be attributed to so-called Expressionist film , he embraces elements of this tradition, especially in the lighting of the scenes. In The Killers , his hard, extremely stylized and low-key lighting works mainly on the principle of chiaroscuro with the contrasts of light and darkness. The light often comes from a single source, is precise and thus models shadows and silhouettes with a dramatic effect. In the opening sequence, for example, Clarens associates the “brutal lighting” of the two contract killers with “a lasting memory of Gestapo gangsters” ; for Greco, their faces appear “like death masks”. This play with light and shadow was already specified in the script as “a la Siodmak”, the lighting dramaturgy solidified as Siodmak's personal trademark.

Siodmak reverses the attribution of meanings to light and darkness in a subversive manner. While light is usually associated with safety, life and hope in film, “the light hurts and frightens” in The Killers , as Shadoian notes. The Swede takes refuge from the killers in the darkness, it remains his only vanishing point. Reardon tries to bring "light" into the "darkness" of the Swede's life story in the context of the story, but the more he finds out, the more deaths the result. The only location in the film that is neutrally and high-key illuminated is - besides the location of the robbery lying in the bright sunlight - the insurance office of Reardon's boss; at the same time also the place that is furthest removed from the environment of the crime and its entanglements.

Mise-en-scene

The extremely sharp photography corresponds to the expressive lighting , achieved through the use of wide-angle lenses and referring to models such as Orson Welles' Citizen Kane . Through the depth of field , Siodmak emphasizes the spatiality and depth of his scenarios, the cinematic space, which, as Prümm notes, is “the space of control, domination, power, but also danger” . Within this deep space, Siodmak often staggered people and objects in triangular constructions. He stages three people at the same time, two people and a prominent object (such as the large lamp that separates Kitty and the Swedes when they first meet) or, for example, two people and a mirror to heighten the ambiguity and ambiguity of a scene. The balance of proportions is deliberately destroyed by the mise-en-scène ; Siodmak often arranges objects in the foreground, making them appear unnaturally large. Such image strategies, which disturb the viewer, emphasize "the confused, lost, deformed and at the same time accentuate the ambiguity of the narrative" , as Grob notes.

Siodmak also destroys the optical balance in the boxing match sequence, in which the sharp diagonals of the boxing ring rope break up the picture. Together with the light situation and the smoke impregnating the scene, according to Greco, there would be a “ claustrophobic narrowness” despite the vastness of the scene ; an effect that Greco sees as a style- defining feature for many other boxing films such as Hunt for Millions ( Body and Soul , 1947), The Fist in the Face ( Requiem for a Heavyweight , 1961) and Like a Wilder Bull ( Raging Bull , 1980).

Camera work and assembly

Siodmak almost exclusively uses the camera at rest. Camera movements are seldom and for dramaturgical reasons, for example when the Swede, his girlfriend Lily and Kitty can be seen together when the Swede and Kitty first meet and then the camera pans away from Lily until only the Swede and Kitty are in the picture . An exception is the monolithic scene of the robbery, filmed in a single drive , which contains 18 camera stops and more than 60 camera refocuses. It is seen as a technical parade exercise with no stylistic connection to the film, in which, according to Greco, the "well-planned and elegantly guided camera" imitates the precision of the crime. The inconsistency is increased by the glaring sunlight and the unsuitable vegetation for the east coast scene.

The film has a relatively slow cutting frequency ; on average there is only one cut every 12.5 seconds. Nevertheless, the large number of locations and scenic situations results in a high speed. Siodmak assembles the film from 43 individual plot segments, but many of them are only short introductory sequences for flashbacks. Siodmak binds the viewer to the action through, as Prümm notes, "a calculating assembly sequence, by alternating unusual close-ups and alienating undersides ." The constant change from extremely high and extremely low camera angles, as Siodmak used to confuse the viewer, should become an often used narrative tool in film noir.

dramaturgy

The Killers as a timeline: the flashbacks and their chronological sequence in relation to the running time of the film

The Killers is compared in the majority of publications with Citizen Kane by Orson Welles. In addition to the depth of focus photography, it is particularly the structure of flashbacks that stimulates this comparison. In eleven non-chronological flashbacks, various witnesses tell the Swede's fate over the last eleven years of his life. These flashbacks usually begin with a voiceover from the narrator and only reveal to Reardon what they have actually witnessed and seen in person. The flashbacks all turn out to be true, they contain no lies of the narrator and are also no dream images, as it turns out at the end in the resolution of the plot.

Prümm calls this narrative strategy “multiple narration” , a series of subjectified memory texts. Jarvie leads to the effect of this suspense -building subjectivity: "In almost every [flashback], we get only a fragment of information that one or more sides is retained before, so they are caught all wrong in the drama appearances." The fact that the story is processed from so many perspectives, an objective determination of reality is much more difficult for the viewer in the course of the film than if only one person were to tell. Steinbauer-Grötsch notes: "Changing first-person narrators permanently create an atmosphere of ambiguity in which individual voices fight for control of the narration and thus make the formulation of a consistent interpretation of reality difficult, if not impossible."

Bordwell ascribes that the narrative does not collapse under the weight of these fragments of memory because of the “superimposition of two dramatic narrative strands” . On the one hand, the life of the Swede is told, but this story is held together by the “strict causal logic” of Reardon's investigation with its recurring motifs and clues (such as Kitty's handkerchief). In order to maintain the balance between the subjectivity of the memory texts and the investigative work of Reardon, carried out in classic, objective Hollywood narrative style, Siodmak uses a few tricks: For example, he brings people into the plot who are only there to reveal their memories and then immediately to get out of the action again. A second trick is Siodmak's strategy of using visual information to give the viewer an edge in knowledge that Reardon cannot have through the narrated memories alone. For example, in contrast to Reardon, the viewer knows that it is Big Jim who recognizes the Swede a week before the murder at the gas station.

Sound and music

Lutz Koepnik comments on the use of sound in Siodmak's film noirs: “Siodmak's use of sound is mostly based on principles of isolation, formalization and stylization. He creates exaggerated clashes of sounds and images that characterize dramatic experiences of loss and collapse and outbreaks of suppressed desire and violence, but at the same time also open up narrative possibilities beyond the classic pattern of closed and causal narrative. ” Siodmak uses these narrative possibilities by, for example lets the sound overlap in the following scene or lets events that take place off- screen be experienced in the soundtrack. When the Swede is shot, only the two killers can be seen; their shots are accompanied by flashes of light. The viewer does not get a glimpse of the dying victim and the situation is only told through light and sound. Quentin Tarantino quotes this scene with the same camera positioning and almost identical lighting and sound design in his film Pulp Fiction at the point when Jules and Vincent shoot the suitcase thieves.

Miklós Rózsa's film music , the main theme of which later became part of the theme melody of the TV series Dragnet , also contributes to the aural effect of the film . Rózsa judgment on his score: "The Killers was a violent movie, and my film music, which also brutal and dissonant , was strongly criticized on the part of the studio." Part of the soundtrack is also a jazz -Stück that the nightclub Green Cat in Reardon and Kitty meet. Commenting on the regular use of jazz in Siodmak's noir films, Spicer explains: “Jazz is often used [in film noir] to indicate disturbed mental states, lack of orientation, or breakdowns, and it was film noir […] that made the connection between violence in an urban context [...] and abnormal sexuality, especially Robert Siodmak's films Phantom Lady, The Killers and Criss Cross ( Daring Alibi ). ” Rózsa explains about this jazz sequence that he had no experience in jazz and that a pianist had a boogie Playing woogie , on which he improvised dissonances himself . Out of the dissonance, Rózsa switched to the main theme of the film at the point when the two killers appear in the Green Cat . In the interview he defends the dramaturgical effect achieved against the accusation of being hackneyed and explains that the melody at this point was merely the result of his improvisation.

Themes and motifs

Hemingway's short story in the context of the film

Hemingway's short story Die Killer , published in 1927, quickly exerted influence on the medium of film in the stylized gangster language of their dialogues. Allusions to Hemingway's dialogues were used as subtitles in the silent film Gärendes Blut (Walking Back) as early as 1928 . In The Killers , the first twelve minutes of the film correspond to Hemingway's short story. Many of the dialogues are exact takeovers from Die Killer . However, while in the short story Hemingway's hero Nick Adams is encouraged to act responsibly for the first time and thus experiences an “enlightenment”, in the film he remains limited to the role of the unconscious extras and with his short appearance only serves as a red herring . Shadoian analyzes that the literary source for the film is only “a symbolic introductory gesture” , an “absurd framing” of a cynical story that completely lacks Hemingway's sentimentality. Clarens concludes that the film is closer to William Riley Burnett than to Hemingway, which he attributes to screenwriter Huston. Hemingway himself was extremely pleased with the way his story was filmed and is said to have seen the film, which he owned as a private copy, more than 200 times.

Female greed - the femme fatale

Kitty Collins corresponds to the type of femme fatale, widespread in film noir, who uses her eroticism for her own self-interest. Asper explains about the vamps in Siodmak's films: “They sell themselves to the highest bidder without hesitation, they know neither love nor compassion, their drive is not sex, as with men, but only money, they only use men's passion for their own purposes " Kitty personifies, as Greco explains, " the greed and evil that people can do to one another in order to satisfy them. " As such, according to Shadoian, she is " more of a symbol than a character, " a modern Circe .

Siodmak gives the figure “a dream-like sensuality, the apotheosis of a mythical femininity” , as Spicer notes, through lighting and cadraging . The mirrors often seen in connection with her signaled her narcissism as well as her duplicity. Krutnik also points out that Kitty is introduced to the plot by singing a song; a common stylistic device in 1940s film. Like a siren, she ensnares her male victim and, through her singing, creates the impression of a need for love to which the man unconditionally succumbs and which is only used coldly.

Male weakness - the anti-hero

In addition to the lighting codes, Elsaesser sees a significant influence of Weimar cinema on film noir in the motif of the "fearful, doomed man" , as seen in films such as The Last Man , The Wax Figure Cabinet or Nosferatu was discussed. The figure of the Swede corresponds to this topos and, according to Shadoian, reflects a mood of the immediate post-war period, "the feeling [...] of guilt and insecurity" of the men returning from the war . Werner explains: "Almost all of Siodmak's characters seem to be obsessed with a single trait" ; in the case of Lancaster's figure, it is passivity. He surrenders to his fate that his fateful love for Kitty means his death. Werner calls him “probably the most resigned figure in film noir” . Krutnik comments that the Swede is drawn to Kitty "because she differs from the masculine lower-class world he knows, because it represents an image of luxury and glamor." Since he can never be really close to her, all he has left is her handkerchief as a fetishized object of a longing for something unattainable, similar to the rosebud Charles Foster Kanes in Citizen Kane .

The Swedes' world of emotions and experiences is reduced to sexual desire. Spicer describes him as a “voluptuous masochist who longs for defeat and death.” Jarvie explains: “Sexual attraction is seen as a strong, even dominant, basis for a relationship, but it obscures all other aspects of the characters [...], and the man must accept that it is his destiny to be destroyed by this woman. " In his weaknesses, the Swede is by no means a tragic character: he allows himself to be guided by romantic feelings instead of advocating moral principles or using his wits. The audience is more inclined to distance themselves from him. Gifford sums up: "The Swede is of course disaffected, but he is also stupid, a real brute, and it is impossible to feel sorry for him."

Detective Curiosity - The Noir Hero

The relationship between Kitty and the Swede is complemented by the character of the investigator Reardon to form a triangular relationship. Meanwhile, investigations are so Bould, "a male investigating the secrets of a man, which (the film) a homoerotic tickling gives" . Just as the Swede is reduced to his passivity and Kitty to her greed, Reardon's only drive is his curiosity. He differs from other film noir detectives in his professional, emotional way of working, such as characters like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe , who hide behind a cynical mask their really noble and morally high motives or follow their feelings at crucial moments. Shadoian explains: “Reardon is not an Oedipus . He is an insurance man from Newark , New Jersey, a city that is geographically and spiritually distant from Thebes . […] The Killers does not demonstrate […] universal justice, it does not demonstrate anything. He rests on the point of view that there are no courses of action. ” Reardon “ learns nothing and feels nothing but his own curiosity. [...]. He is a hero without heroic qualifications " and thus the " prototype of the real noir hero. "

crime

Clarens states that the interpretation of the film as a caper movie corresponds to the mood of the post-war period. The audience reflected on their own war experiences in the cinematic representation of men working together towards a goal, each using his or her individual skills. He notes, "The robbery was the refinement of a peacetime war story by maintaining the momentum but replacing waving flags and war rhetoric with crime." Like war, crime shows how easy it is to cross moral boundaries and that civilians are dispensable victims. Greco sees The Killers as the prototype of the “how-to gangster film” , in which the thoughts and plans of the gangsters are shown in detail; a trend that was to be continued in films like Gangsters in Key Largo (1948).

Siodmak directs his main focus not on the criminal act and the technical details of the crime, but on the relationships between the protagonists, through which the criminal act and murder are set in motion. As with Hitchcock, in The Killers “the crime story is just a vehicle to get to deeper layers,” as Prümm notes. Clarens sees the neglect of criminal history confirmed in the way Siodmak orchestrated the robbery, namely from an " Olympic standpoint" that "seems to despise the hard facts of the crime" . Because of this, according to Shadoian, “godlike objectivity” , the whole episode appears “infinitely small, unreal, unimportant, the fragment of a dream” . Prümm notes that the scene stands as a “closed action picture” in Lumiere's tradition, in that the process and cinematographic representation form a unit; a sharp contrast to the confused, torn memory images that the film usually puts in the foreground and thus an exclusion from the main plot.

Fatalism and nihilism

For Shadoian, The Killers is “an unusually complicated film, and all its complications are meaningless, a busy masquerade of a life behind which lies infinite despair.” Shadoian answers the film's core question, why the Swede had to die, with this: “The film says , he died for nothing. ” The film creates a narrative “ pattern of insignificance ” because it is clear from the start and the viewer is reminded again and again that the Swede is dead. The viewer is denied a happy ending , and even the detective's success in the investigation is cynically marginalized by the last scene.

Asper comments on the deeply pessimistic worldview in Siodmak's crime films: “In Siodmak's gangster dramas […] there are no happy endings at all […], they end in a slaughter in which almost all protagonists fall victim, and the survivors no longer stand a chance. [...]. There are no positive characters, every interpersonal relationship is destroyed […]. Feelings like love and compassion appear completely corrupted, in Siodmak's world there is […] no humanity and also no utopian ideas of happiness, his film noirs end in complete nihilism . "

literature

Literary template

  • Ernest Hemingway : The Killers in: The Nick Adams Stories . With a foreword by Philip Young. German by Annemarie Horschitz-Horst and Richard K. Flesch. Reinbek near Hamburg 1999. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, rororo 15091, ISBN 3-499-15091-3 .

Secondary literature

  • Helmut G. Asper: Film exiles in the Universal Studio 1933–1960. Bertz & Fischer, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86505-163-4 .
  • Alexander Ballinger & Danny Graydon: The Rough Guide to Film Noir. Rough Guides Ltd., London and New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-84353-474-7 .
  • David Bordwell : Narration in the Fiction Film. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1985, ISBN 0-299-10174-6 .
  • Carlos Clarens: Crime Movies. Da Capo Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 0-306-80768-8 .
  • Joseph Greco: The File on Robert Siodmak in Hollywood: 1941–1951. Dissertation.com USA 1999, ISBN 1-58112-081-8 .
  • Mark T. Conard (Ed.): The Philosophy of Film Noir. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2006, ISBN 0-8131-2377-1 .
  • Wolfgang Jakobsen and Hans Helmut Prinzler (eds.): Siodmak Bros. Berlin - Paris - London - Hollywood. Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation and Argon Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-87024-469-0 .
  • Frank Krutnik: In a Lonely Street - Film noir, Genre, Masculinity. Routledge, London and New York 1991, ISBN 0-415-02630-X .
  • Robert Siodmak , Hans-Christoph Blumenberg (ed.): Between Berlin and Hollywood - memories of a great film director. Herbig Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-8004-0892-9 .
  • Jack Shadoian: Dreams & Dead Ends - The American Gangster Film. Oxford University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-19-514292-6 .
  • Andrew Spicer: Film Noir. Pearson Education Ltd., Harlow 2002, ISBN 0-582-43712-1 .
  • Barbara Steinbauer-Grötsch: The long night of shadows - film noir and film exile. Bertz & Fischer, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86505-158-8 .
  • Paul Werner : Film noir - The shadow games of the "black series". Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24452-8 .
  • Harris, Oliver: Film Noir Fascination: Outside History, but Historically So . In: Cinema Journal 43 (2003), No. 1, pp. 3-24

References and comments

  1. ^ Siodmak: p. 117
  2. ^ Greco: p. 86
  3. ↑ a b c d Clarens: p. 199
  4. ↑ a b Greco: p. 91
  5. ↑ a b Greco: p. 87
  6. ↑ a b Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 206
  7. ↑ a b Greco: p. 98
  8. ↑ a b c Greco: p. 97
  9. ↑ quoted in: John Daniell: Ava Gardner. St. Martin's Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-312-06240-0 , p. 32
  10. ↑ quoted in: Greco: p. 91
  11. ↑ Steinbauer-Grötsch: p. 116
  12. ↑ Ballinger / Graydon: p. 104
  13. ↑ a b Greco: p. 90
  14. ^ Asper: p. 192
  15. ↑ Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 206. Jakobsen and Prinzler name the premiere date August 28 in Loew's State , New York City , Greco, however, August 7, 1946 in the Winter Garden , New York City (Greco: p. 87). Before that, as Ballinger and Graydon rumored, the film was said to have been secretly shown by Hellinger to some underworld greats from his circle of acquaintances and to have been found to be good in its reality content. Ballinger / Graydon: p. 103
  16. ↑ quoted in: Greco: p. 197
  17. ↑ quoted in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 32
  18. ↑ Review by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times
  19. ↑ quoted in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 63
  20. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier , Jürgen Menningen and Berndt Schulz : Cinema of the night - Hollywood's black series . Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg and Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-89136-040-1 , p. 59
  21. ^ Rolf-Bernhard Essig : The Killers in: Michael Töteberg (Ed.): Metzler Film Lexikon . 2nd Edition. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02068-1 , p. 349
  22. ↑ a b Werner: p. 127
  23. ↑ a b Barry Gifford: Out of the Past - Adventures in Film noir. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2001, ISBN 1-57806-290-X , p. 98
  24. ^ Andrew Dickos: Street with No Name. A History of the Classic American Film Noir . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2002, ISBN 978-0-8131-2243-4 , p. 35
  25. ↑ a b Steinbauer-Grötsch: p. 142
  26. ^ Mark Bould: Film Noir - From Berlin to Sin City. Wallflower, London and New York 2005, ISBN 1-904764-50-9 , p. 8
  27. ↑ Norbert Grob : Avengers of the Underworld in: Classic Film Volume 2 1946–1962. Philipp Reclam jun GmbH & Co., Stuttgart, 5th edition 2006, ISBN 3-15-030033-9 , p. 25
  28. ↑ Shadoian: p. 103
  29. ↑ Asper: p. 190 Jakobsen even speaks of a daily wage of 1,000 dollars. Wolfgang Jakobsen: Can I have the salt? In: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 32
  30. ↑ Wolfgang Jakobsen: “Can I have the salt?” in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 32
  31. ^ Asper: p. 203
  32. ↑ a b Clarens: p. 200
  33. ↑ Burkhard Röwekamp: From film noir to method noire - the evolution of cinematic black painting. Schüren Verlag, Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-89472-344-0 , p. 110
  34. ^ Greco: p. 213
  35. ^ Filming in Britain, Europe and the United States - Mr. Siodmak Compares Conditions in the Times of March 20, 1959
  36. ↑ Avengers of the Underworld from the German synchronous index, accessed on September 30, 2017
  37. ^ Greco: p. 96
  38. ↑ Shadoian: p. 96
  39. ↑ a b Shadoian: p. 97
  40. ↑ a b Karl Prümm : Universal narrator. Realist of the immediate in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 159
  41. ^ Krutnik: p. 121
  42. ↑ a b c Shadoian: p. 99
  43. ↑ Norbert Grob: Avengers of the Underworld in: Classic Film Volume 2 1946–1962. Philipp Reclam jun GmbH & Co., Stuttgart, 5th edition 2006, ISBN 3-15-030033-9 , p. 26
  44. ↑ Shadoian: p. 98
  45. ↑ Ballinger / Graydon: p. 103
  46. ↑ a b Bordwell: p. 194
  47. ^ Karl Prümm: Universal narrator. Realist of the immediate in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 170
  48. ^ Krutnik: p. 115
  49. ↑ The system is based on Bordwell: p. 195f.
  50. ↑ Clarens: p. 199, Spicer: p. 78, Ballinger / Graydon: p. 103, Greco: p. 88, Essig: p. 349, Shadoian: p. 81, Bordwell: p. 194 and many others
  51. ↑ a b c Bordwell: p. 197
  52. ↑ Spicer: p. 78
  53. ↑ a b Karl Prümm: Universal narrator. Realist of the immediate in: Jakobsen / Prinzler: p. 150
  54. ^ Ian Jarvie: Knowledge, Morality and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past in: Conard: p. 176
  55. ↑ Steinbauer-Grötsch: p. 117
  56. ^ Bordwell: p. 193
  57. ↑ Lutz Koepnick: The Dark Mirror - German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 2002, ISBN 0-520-23311-5 , p. 170
  58. ↑ Burkhard Röwekamp: From film noir to method noire - the evolution of cinematic black painting. Schüren Verlag, Marburg 2003, ISBN 3-89472-344-0 , p. 61
  59. ↑ Werner: p. 73
  60. ↑ quoted in: Asper: p. 232
  61. ↑ Spicer: p. 48
  62. ^ Robert Porfirio, Alain Silver and James Ursini (Eds.): Film Noir Reader 3 - Interviews with Filmmakers of the Classic Noir Period. Limelight Editions, New York 2002, ISBN 0-87910-961-0 , p. 169
  63. ^ Clarens: p. 196
  64. ^ Clarens: p. 198
  65. ↑ a b c Shadoian: p. 80
  66. ↑ Greco: 86. Greco suspects, the film did Hemingway therefore liked it so much, because he whose penchant for misogyny corresponded
  67. ↑ Asper: p. 196
  68. ↑ Shadoian: p. 94
  69. ↑ Spicer: p. 91
  70. ^ Krutnik: p. 117
  71. ↑ Thomas Elsaesser : The Weimar Cinema - enlightened and ambiguous. Verlag Vorwerk 8, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-930916-24-X , p. 311
  72. ↑ Werner: p. 41
  73. ^ Krutnik: p. 118
  74. ↑ Spicer: p. 96
  75. ^ Ian Jarvie: Knowledge, Morality and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past in: Conard: p. 171
  76. ^ Ian Jarvie: Knowledge, Morality and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past in: Conard: p. 183
  77. ^ Mark Bould: Film Noir - From Berlin to Sin City. Wallflower, London and New York 2005, ISBN 1-904764-50-9 , p. 9
  78. ↑ Shadoian: p. 83
  79. ^ Greco: p. 88
  80. ↑ Spicer: p. 117
  81. ↑ Shadoian: p. 81
  82. ↑ Shadoian: p. 82
  83. ^ Asper: p. 198

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This article was added to the list of excellent articles on April 26, 2008 in this version .