RELEASE The Killers 05.08.09 > 29.08.09 / Cinéma Arenberg Robert Siodmak USA 1946 / Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker / ZW / 103’ / OV / OND: NL – FR / NIEUWE KOPIE Crew & cast
Regie: Robert Siodmak Scenario: Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks, John Huston (ongecr.) naar een kortverhaal van Ernest Hemingway Fotografie: Woody Bredell, David S. Horsely Set design: Jack Otterson, Martin Obzina Productie: Mark Hellinger, Universal Studios Met: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker
Release
CINEMATEK kocht een nieuwe kopie aan van deze klassieker. De film zal vanaf 05.08.09 te zien zijn in Cinema Arenberg (Koninginnegalerij 26, 1000 Brussel) in het kader van ÉCRAN TOTAL. Daarna volgen vertoningen in andere zalen. Distributie
CINEMATEK Meer informatie en foto’s: Tonie De Waele / 02 551 19 35 /
[email protected]
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Verhaal
Hoewel hij tijdig gewaarschuwd wordt, laat pomphouder Ole Anderson (‘de Zweed’) zich zonder meer door twee huurmoordenaars afknallen. De lokale politie wil het zaakje snel vergeten, maar verzekeringsagent Reardon raakt geïntrigeerd door de bizarre dood van zijn cliënt en speurt verder. Zijn zoektocht voert hem naar Philadelphia, waar de Zweed bekend staat als voormalig bokser en crimineel … Film
The Killers betekende de Hollywood-doorbraak voor Robert Siodmak, een uit naziDuitsland gevluchte Pool. Deze Universal-productie is de tweede uit een reeks van vier inventieve misdaadfilms (Phantom Lady, The Dark Mirror, Criss Cross), die Siodmaks naam even groot maakten als die van medebannelingen Lang & Preminger. Wie nog nooit een film noir zag, schoolt zich met The Killers in geen tijd bij. Gedraaid in een tijdperk waar oorlogspessimisme nazindert en fatalisme overheerst, biedt de film alles waar het genre voor staat; uitgekookte schurken, cynische speurders en mannen die ten prooi vallen aan doortrapte vrouwen, in een wereld rijk aan duistere stegen en rokerige achterkamertjes. Het scenario baseert zich op een novelle van Ernest Hemingway. Het is een van de weinige adaptaties die de filmschuwe schrijver - min of meer - waarderen kon. Aan het verhaal werkten vier geboren schrijvers, waaronder John Huston (toentertijd onder contract bij Warner en bijgevolg niet vermeld op de titelrol). Huston paste zijn in The Maltese Falcon beproefde recept toe, en injecteerde Hemingways literaire dialogen rechtstreeks in de film. Net als in het boek start het verhaal in een verlaten eettent, om vervolgens af te wijken en zich naar de conventies van de jaren 40-whodunit te schikken. Een baanbrekend model (zie Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity) waarbij een man met zijn laatste adem een zonde opbiecht, gevolgd door een resem desoriënterende flashbacks richting waarheid: vallen voor de verkeerde vrouw, die zowel man als minnaar mee de dieperik in sleurt. Siodmak en cameraman Bredell openen de film briljant met een stel lange onheilspellende schaduwen die de komst van de moordenaars aankondigen. Een ander huzarenstukje is de roof op een hoedenfabriek: gefilmd in één lang kraanshot, met een zwevende camera die de overval van begin tot einde volgt, terwijl de geluidsband enkel een commentaarstem laat horen. De montage is een even sterk staaltje precisiewerk: Siodmak biedt geen groot spektakel maar tot op de seconde afgemeten flashbacks, die de spanning maximaal ten top drijven. The Killers is ook de doorbraakfilm van Burt Lancaster, hier in zijn destijds fel opgemerkte debuutrol. Ava Gardner speelt een heerlijk slonzige femme fatale, wiens wispelturigheid een weinig verrassende afloop laat voorspellen. En de vertolking door Edmond O’Brien doet Humphrey Bogart alle eer aan – vooral in het samenspel met Gardner aan het einde van de film. Robert Siodmak (1900-1974)
Robert Siodmak is an example of the UFA-influenced German directors who moved to Hollywood when war threatened Europe. Less well known than his compatriots Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang, Siodmak demonstrated his cinematic skills early in his career with his innovative movie Menschen am Sonntag, which featured a nonprofessional cast, hand-held camera shots, stop motion photography, and the sort of flashbacks that later became associated with his work in America.
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Siodmak carried with him to Hollywood the traditions and skills of his German film heritage, and became a major influence in American film noir of the 1940s. Deep shadows, claustrophobic compositions, elegant camera movements, and meticulously created settings on a grand scale mark the UFA origins of his work. Such themes as the treachery of love and the prevalence of the murderous impulse in ordinary people recur in his American films. The use of the flashback is a dominant narrative device, reflecting his fatalistic approach to story and character. The Killers presents a narrative that includes multiple flashbacks, each one of which is a part of the total story and all of which must be accumulated to understand the opening sequence of the film. This opening, based directly on Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story, is a masterful example of film storytelling. Siodmak’s work is frequently discussed in comparison with that of Alfred Hitchcock, partly because they shared a producer, Joan Harrison, for a period of time. Harrison produced two Siodmak films for Universal, The Suspect and Uncle Harry. In both films a seemingly ordinary, innocent man is drawn into a tangled web of murder, while retaining the audience’s sympathy. Criss Cross, arguably Siodmak’s best noir work, ably demonstrates his ability to create depth of characterization through music, mood, and action, particularly in a scene in which Burt Lancaster watches his ex-wife, Yvonne DeCarlo, dance with another man. His fatal obsession with his wife and the victim/victimizer nature of their relationship is capably demonstrated through purely visual means. (uit: Internation Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2: Directors, St. James Press, 2000, p. 922)
Burt Lancaster (1900-1974)
Burt Lancaster started his life by running off to the circus, leaving New York University where he had been a basketball star, and becoming an acrobat with partner Nick Cravat, who would later appear alongside Lancaster in many films, such as Trapeze, the actor’s sober tribute to the daredevil life of the aerial artist he once had been. Lancaster’s circus experience supplied him with certain qualities that were advantageous to a movie actor: a powerful physique and complete physical control. Nature supplied him with other features that contributed to his star quality: rugged good looks and, especially, the keyboard smile that would become his trademark. His first screen roles, obtained for him by agent Harold Hecht, usually cast Lancaster as a brooding ex-convict, a taciturn villain, or a tense goon—most notably in Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, Lancaster’s screen debut, where he played a crooked prizefighter nicknamed the Swede who is marked for death. It was only a few years after this that Lancaster followed the groundbreaking lead of actor James Stewart and went freelance, starting his own film production company in partnership with Hecht and James Hill. Hecht, Hill, and Lancaster’s first picture was the well-received Apache, directed by Robert Aldrich. Lancaster starred as Massai, a warrior who refuses to surrender to the white man’s ways after the capture of Geronimo, and is marked for extinction. Over Lancaster and Aldrich’s objections, the film’s grim conclusion was compromised in favor of a happier one for box-office reasons. The same star-director team followed Apache later that year with the acerbic Western adventure, Vera Cruz, a smash hit. Several decades later, Aldrich and Lancaster teamed again for Ulzana’s Raid, a potent saga of the Indian Wars that also mirrored the then-current Vietnam conflict; it concluded on the bleak, more realistic note denied them earlier on Apache.
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Lancaster has projected earnestness as the truth-seeking son of Edward G. Robinson in All My Sons, lovability as the truck driver opposite Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo, and perseverance as the Native American athlete Jim Thorpe in Jim Thorpe: All-American. For all of his brawn, he was also quite good at communicating vulnerability, gentleness, and self-doubt. All these elements were combined in his Oscar-nominated performance as Sergeant Warden in From Here to Eternity and as convicted killer Robert Stroud in Birdman of Alcatraz, a pet project. Lancaster’s career remains unmatched for his persistent refusal to allow Hollywood to typecast him strictly as a he-man. Because of his deep concern for the content of his films and eagerness to work with directors he considered important, he was willing to undertake virtually any kind of part. (uit: Internation Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4: Actors and Actresses, St. James Press, 2000, pp. 691-692)
Ava Gardner (1922-1990)
Although Ava Gardner appeared in more than 25 films during the 1940s, her screen identity did not really emerge until the 1950s. A product of the studio system, Gardner was put under long-term contract at MGM in the early 1940s. After playing small roles in mostly minor films, she won acclaim in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, emerging (along with Burt Lancaster) as a star, and she is a radiant presence in The Hucksters, Singapore, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, and Showboat, among others. To an extent, the studio succeeded in promoting her as a sex goddess because of her extraordinary beauty and sensuality. Gardner, however, never fulfilled the expectation that she would become a sex symbol. In fact, during the 1950s, Gardner undermined this status, specifically by not exploiting her physicality or attempting to develop identification with a cinematic stereotype that would make her accessible to the male audience. The feminist critic Marjorie Rosen (Popcorn Venus) asserts that Gardner embodied the ‘‘ideal fantasy creature’’ in several films, including Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa; but, on the contrary, Gardner refutes this concept of objectification in the film. The film’s tensions are produced through her sensitive characterization of a woman who insists in having a right to a subjective identity. She plays a similar ‘‘rebel’’ character in George Cukor’s Bhowani Junction. Cukor, aware that her potential had been undeveloped because she was treated by the studio as a beautiful object to be featured in mediocre films, encouraged Gardner to explore her emotional range through this challenging assignment. Her other outstanding performance is in John Ford’s Mogambo, which has the feel of a Hawks film in the construction of the central heterosexual relationship and the sense of ease in the narrative’s flow. In the film, Gardner, like the Hawksian heroine, displays ‘‘masculine’’ strength without losing her feminine appeal.
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As a star of the 1950s, Gardner’s screen identity was uncharacteristic of a period that attempted to equate women’s sexual desirability with the size of their physical endowments. Still, no more sublimely beautiful woman ever appeared on a movie screen. Like a number of her characters (such as Pandora Reynolds in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman and Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises), Gardner became an American expatriate, living for many years in London. She died there of pneumonia after having completed her autobiography, which was published posthumously. (uit: Internation Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4: Actors and Actresses, St. James Press, 2000, p. 469)
Burt Lancaster started his life by running off to the circus, leaving New York University where he had been a basketball star, and becoming an acrobat with partner Nick Cravat, who would later appear alongside Lancaster in many films, such as Trapeze, the actor’s sober tribute to the daredevil life of the aerial artist he once had been. Lancaster’s circus experience supplied him with certain qualities that were advantageous to a movie actor: a powerful physique and complete physical control. Nature supplied him with other features that contributed to his star quality: rugged good looks and, especially, the keyboard smile that would become his trademark. His first screen roles, obtained for him by agent Harold Hecht, usually cast Lancaster as a brooding ex-convict, a taciturn villain, or a tense goon—most notably in Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, Lancaster’s screen debut, where he played a crooked prizefighter nicknamed the Swede who is marked for death. It was only a few years after this that Lancaster followed the groundbreaking lead of actor James Stewart and went freelance, starting his own film production company in partnership with Hecht and James Hill. Hecht, Hill, and Lancaster’s first picture was the well-received Apache, directed by Robert Aldrich. Lancaster starred as Massai, a warrior who refuses to surrender to the white man’s ways after the capture of Geronimo, and is marked for extinction. Over Lancaster and Aldrich’s objections, the film’s grim conclusion was compromised in favor of a happier one for box-office reasons. The same star-director team followed Apache later that year with the acerbic Western adventure, Vera Cruz, a smash hit. Several decades later, Aldrich and Lancaster teamed again for Ulzana’s Raid, a potent saga of the Indian Wars that also mirrored the then-current Vietnam conflict; it concluded on the bleak, more realistic note denied them earlier on Apache. Lancaster has projected earnestness as the truth-seeking son of Edward G. Robinson in All My Sons, lovability as the truck driver opposite Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo, and perseverance as the Native American athlete Jim Thorpe in Jim Thorpe: All-American. For all of his brawn, he was also quite good at communicating vulnerability, gentleness, and self-doubt. All these elements were combined in his Oscar-nominated performance as Sergeant Warden in From Here to Eternity and as convicted killer Robert Stroud in Birdman of Alcatraz, a pet project. Lancaster’s career remains unmatched for his persistent refusal to allow Hollywood to typecast him strictly as a he-man. Because of his deep concern for the content of his films and eagerness to work with directors he considered important, he was willing to undertake virtually any kind of part. (uit: Internation Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4: Actors and Actresses, St. James Press, 2000, pp. 691-692)
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