Killing Stanley Kubrick Was One

¶ … Killing

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most disputed film directors. He always tried to shock the audience through image and dialog. "The Killing" is made in his twenties, but Kubrick proved to be very self assured and confident all over the movie. The basic elements of this film are that of a film noir.

The story is very well written, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), fresh out of prison plans a heist, but his scheme is tangled by the wife of George Peatty who is in on the plan, airport regulations and the wife's boyfriend.

The style used is that to make "The Killing" a film noir. There are heavy shadows and patterns of darkness. The frames are characterized by low key lightning, this leads to a sense of claustrophobia. The scene when Johnny Clay tells the gang about the heist and they are sitting at the table, they are lightened only by a lamp coming from the ceiling; this transmits a sense of mystery and tension. The characters move through dark interiors.

The characters are specific to film noir, gangsters who meticulously plan and fulfil the plan. They are corrupt and cynical. I think that a line which defines the entire film and of course the film noir style, is that told by Maurice to Johnny Clay: "You have my sympathy, Johnny. You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else. The perfect mediocrity. No better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable. You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They are admired and hero-worshiped but there is always present the underlying wish to see them destroyed at the peak of their growth." It's pessimistic and full of cynic; this is specific for the American cinema during the late forties and early fifties, its themes of alienation and paranoia.

Another pattern of the film noir is the urban setting which has dark and/or wet streets. Take for example the scene when Mike leaves for the bus station, for the flower box, the street outside his apartment is wet.

What might be rather bothering is the narration, the voice is not the most pleasant one, and some may find the information in it too much. But we can not ignore that it is an important to the film's structure, the description sounds like the narrator's a reporter looking back on the past events with objectivity.

Definitely ingenious because it relies heavily on flashbacks, and is telling things out of order depending on which character is involved with the heist; in spite of these nonlinear sequences it is very straightforward, very unique for its time.

Kubrick is the master in creating tension in his plots, playing with time, he takes each character and plays its incident, then goes back in time to see what other personage was doing, and what is unique about Stanley Kubrick is how he shocks, always searching to impress the viewer, either by image or dialog, always trying to create something new