The Killers is a 1946 American film noir directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster in his film debut, along with Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien and Sam Levene.
Based in part on the 1927 short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, it focuses on an insurance detective’s investigation into the execution by two professional killers of a former boxer who was unresistant to his own murder. The screenplay was written by Anthony Veiller, with uncredited contributions by John Huston and Richard Brooks.
Released in August 1946, The Killers was a critical and commercial success, earning four Academy Award nominations, including for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Hemingway, who was habitually disgusted with how Hollywood distorted his thematic intentions, was an open admirer of the film. It is widely regarded as one of the classics of the film noir genre.
In 2008, The Killers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Plot
In 1946, two hitmen, Max and Al, arrive in Brentwood, New Jersey, to kill Pete Lund, a former boxer known as “The Swede”. After being confronted by the pair in a diner, Lund’s coworker, Nick Adams, warns him. Strangely, Lund makes no attempt to flee, and he is shot dead in his room.
“The Swede” is revealed to have really been named Ole Anderson. A life insurance investigator, Jim Reardon, is assigned to find and pay the beneficiary of the Swede’s $2,500 policy.
Tracking down and interviewing the dead man’s friends and associates, Reardon doggedly pieces together his story. Philadelphia police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky, a longtime friend of the Swede, is particularly helpful.
In flashback it is revealed that the Swede’s boxing career was cut short by a hand injury. Rejecting Lubinsky’s suggestion to join the police force, the Swede becomes mixed up with crime boss “Big Jim” Colfax and drops his girlfriend Lilly for the more glamorous Kitty Collins.
When Lubinsky, now married to Lilly, catches Kitty wearing stolen jewelry, the Swede confesses to the crime and attacks him, leading to three years in prison.
After completing his sentence, the Swede, “Dum-Dum” Clarke, and “Blinky” Franklin are recruited for a payroll robbery in Hackensack, New Jersey, masterminded by Colfax. Complicating matters is the fact that Kitty is now with Colfax.
The robbery nets the gang $254,912. When their boarding house allegedly burns down, all of the gang members but the Swede are notified of a new rendezvous place.
Kitty tells the Swede that he is being double-crossed by his associates, inciting him to take all of the money at gunpoint and flee. Kitty meets with him later in Atlantic City, then disappears with the money herself.
In the present, Reardon stakes out the hotel where the Swede was killed. He witnesses Dum-Dum sneaking into the building, searching for a clue that might lead him to the loot. Reardon confronts him, but he flees before he can be arrested.
Reardon subsequently receives confirmation that the safe house fire occurred hours later than it was alleged to have. With this piece of information, Reardon becomes convinced that Colfax and Kitty set the Swede up from the beginning and were responsible for his murder.
Reardon goes to visit Colfax, now a successful building contractor in Pittsburgh. When confronted, Colfax claims no knowledge of Kitty’s whereabouts. Reardon lies, claiming he has enough evidence to convict Kitty.
A short time later Reardon receives a phone call from Kitty, who suggests they meet at a nightclub called The Green Cat. Once there Kitty claims she convinced the Swede that the others were double-crossing him so he would take her away from Colfax.
She admits having taken the money after her meeting with the Swede in Atlantic City and agrees to offer Colfax as a fall guy to save herself, believing Reardon’s revelation that he has evidence against her.
While Kitty goes to the ladies’ room, Max and Al arrive at the nightclub and try to kill Reardon. Anticipating such a confrontation, Reardon and Lubinsky manage to slay both hitmen instead. When Reardon goes to retrieve Kitty he discovers she has escaped through the bathroom window.
Reardon and Lubinsky depart the nightclub and head to Colfax’s mansion. When they arrive they find that Dum-Dum and Colfax have mortally wounded each other in a violent shootout only moments before. Lubinsky asks Colfax, barely hanging on, why he had the Swede killed.
Colfax finally admits to the contract, saying he feared other gang members would locate the Swede and realize that Colfax and Kitty had double-crossed them all and absconded with the money. Kitty, kneeling beside her husband, begs him to exonerate her in a deathbed confession, but he dies first.
Cast
Burt Lancaster as Pete Lund/Ole “Swede” Anderson
Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins
Edmond O’Brien as Jim Reardon
Albert Dekker as “Big Jim” Colfax
Sam Levene as Lt. Sam Lubinsky
Vince Barnett as Charleston
Virginia Christine as Lilly Harmon Lubinsky
Jack Lambert as “Dum-Dum” Clarke
Charles D. Brown as Packy Robinson
Donald MacBride as R.S. Kenyon, Reardon’s boss
Charles McGraw as Al
William Conrad as Max
Phil Brown as Nick Adams
Jeff Corey as “Blinky” Franklin
Harry Hayden as George
Bill Walker as Sam
Queenie Smith as Mary Ellen Daugherty
Beatrice Roberts as Nurse
John Miljan as Jake the Rake
Vera Lewis as Ma Hirsch
Garry Owen as Joe Smalley
Production
Development
The first 20 minutes of the film, showing the arrival of the two contract killers and the murder of “Swede” Anderson is a close adaptation of Hemingway’s 1927 short story in Scribner’s Magazine. The rest of the film, showing Reardon’s investigation of the murder, is wholly original.
Producer Mark Hellinger paid $36,750 for the screen rights to Hemingway’s story, his first independent production. The initial screenplay was rewritten by Richard Brooks, then a contracted story writer for Hellinger, and then heavily re-worked by Anthony Veiller and his frequent collaborator John Huston. Only Veiller is credited on the final film, Huston went uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros.
Siodmak later said Hellinger’s newspaper background meant he “always insisted on each scene ending with a punchline and every character being overestablished with a telling remark” which the director fought against.
Casting
Development
The first 20 minutes of the film, showing the arrival of the two contract killers and the murder of “Swede” Anderson is a close adaptation of Hemingway’s 1927 short story in Scribner’s Magazine. The rest of the film, showing Reardon’s investigation of the murder, is wholly original.
Producer Mark Hellinger paid $36,750 for the screen rights to Hemingway’s story, his first independent production. The initial screenplay was rewritten by Richard Brooks, then a contracted story writer for Hellinger, and then heavily re-worked by Anthony Veiller and his frequent collaborator John Huston. Only Veiller is credited on the final film, Huston went uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros.
Siodmak later said Hellinger’s newspaper background meant he “always insisted on each scene ending with a punchline and every character being overestablished with a telling remark” which the director fought against.
Casting
When the film was first released, Bosley Crowther gave it a positive review and lauded the acting. He wrote “With Robert Siodmak’s restrained direction, a new actor, Burt Lancaster, gives a lanky and wistful imitation of a nice guy who’s wooed to his ruin. And Ava Gardner is sultry and sardonic as the lady who crosses him up.
Edmond O’Brien plays the shrewd investigator in the usual cool and clipped detective style, Sam Levene is very good as a policeman and Albert Dekker makes a thoroughly nasty thug…The tempo is slow and metronomic, which makes for less excitement than suspense.” In The Nation in 1946, critic James Agee wrote, “The story is well presented, but Hemingway’s talk … sounds, on the screen, as cooked-up and formal as an eclogue …
There is a good strident journalistic feeling for tension, noise, sentiment, and jazzed-up realism, all well manipulated by Robert Siodmak, which is probably chiefly to the credit of the producer, Mark Hellinger. There is nothing unique or even valuable about the picture, but energy combined with attention to form and detail doesn’t turn up every day; neither does good entertainment.”
In a review of the DVD release, Scott Tobias, while critical of the screenplay, described the noir style, writing “Lifted note-for-note from the Hemingway story, the classic opening scene of Siodmak’s film sings with the high tension, sharp dialogue, and grim humor that’s conspicuously absent from the rest of Anthony Veiller’s mediocre screenplay…A lean block of muscles and little else, Burt Lancaster stars as the hapless victim, an ex-boxer who was unwittingly roped into the criminal underworld and the even more dangerous gaze of Ava Gardner, a memorably sultry and duplicitous femme fatale…Siodmak sustains a fatalistic tone with the atmospheric touches that define noir, favoring stark lighting effects that throw his post-war world into shadow.”
The film was considered a great commercial and critical success and launched Lancaster and his co-star Ava Gardner to stardom.
Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 100%, based on 32 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.12/10.
Accolades
Wins
Edgar Award: Edgar; from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture, Anthony Veiller (writer), Mark Hellinger (producer), and Robert Siodmak (director); 1947.
Nominations—1947 Academy Awards
Best Director: Robert Siodmak.
Best Film Editing: Arthur Hilton.
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture: Miklós Rózsa.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Anthony Veiller.
American Film Institute Lists
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Thrills – Nominated
AFI’s 10 Top 10 – Nominated Gangster Film
Adaptations
The Killers was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on the June 5, 1949, broadcast of Screen Director’s Playhouse, starring Burt Lancaster, Shelley Winters and William Conrad.
In 1956, director Andrei Tarkovsky, then a film student, created a 19-minute short based on the story which is featured on the Criterion Collection’s release of the DVD.
The film was adapted in 1964, using the same title but with an
