“WE’RE GONNA KILL THE SWEDE”

By Raymond Benson

The Criterion Collection gave us the DVD versions of these two excellent crime thrillers twelve years ago. The company has now seen fit to upgrade the release to Blu-ray.

Based loosely on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, both versions of The Killers begin with the author’s premise and then take off from there in very different directions. It’s interesting to see how the respective screenwriters adapted the story and then created two disparate feature-length tales out of it. In Hemingway’s piece, two hit men arrive in a small town looking for “the Swede.” They terrorize the owner, cook, and a customer in a diner in an attempt to find the guy. After the killers leave in frustration, the customer runs to the Swede’s boarding house and finds him in bed with his clothes on. He warns the Swede about the men, but the Swede says he’s not going to do anything about it. The customer goes back to the diner and, after realizing no one cares, leaves town. And that’s it.

The 1946 version faithfully captures the short story—even down to the dialogue—for the first ten minutes. Where the short story ends, the movie goes on and we see the hit men actually kill the Swede (played by Burt Lancaster in his first starring role). Enter Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien, with third billing, but he’s really the protagonist of the film!) as an insurance inspector—it turns out the Swede had a life insurance policy that benefits an old lady who helped him once. Reardon is determined to uncover the story behind it all, and the rest of the movie follows his investigation into the Swede’s life in crime (told entirely in flashbacks). The Swede was a boxer who got mixed up with Big Jim, a racketeer (played by Albert Dekker), and falls in love with Big Jim’s gal, Kitty (played by smokin’ hot Ava Gardner, in one of her first starring roles; Gardner had been kicking around Hollywood since the early 40s—this was her big break). As we all know, it’s not good to mess around with the crime boss’s dame.

Robert Siodmak received an Oscar nomination for Best Director on the picture (it was also nominated for adapted screenplay, editing, and music score). There’s no question that The Killers is a seminal film noir, one of the best of the bunch produced when Hollywood was churning out these types of gritty crime pictures by the dozens. Siodmak’s hand is assured as he brings in all the trademark film noir elements—expressionistic lighting, a femme fatale, stark brutality, a cynical attitude, flashbacks, a “man haunted by the past,” and more. The picture could serve as a Film Noir 101 course. Lancaster is fine and Gardner is sexy and dangerous, but it is O’Brien who holds the movie together.

The 1964 version is a different animal. It was produced to be the very first TV movie, but NBC viewed the finished product and deemed it too violent for television. Instead, the producers released it theatrically worldwide. Directed by Don Siegel (billed as “Donald Siegel”), The Killers Mach II stars Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the hitmen, who here become the focal point of the new story. John Cassavetes plays the Swede character, only here he is a racecar driver named Johnny. The femme fatale, Sheila, is played by Angie Dickinson, and get this... the crime boss is none other than Ronald Reagan in his last film role before he became a politician.

The film begins basically the same way, but the setting is different. The two hitmen come looking for Johnny and they kill him. Marvin’s hitman character then takes over the dramatic action originally performed by O’Brien in the 1946 version—Marvin is the one who wants to find out why he and his partner were hired to kill Johnny, as well as what happened to a load of stolen cash that Johnny may have hidden.

While not as important or engaging as the 1946 edition, The Killers Mach II is worth watching for Siegel’s solid craftsmanship. NBC was probably right not to broadcast the picture on television in 1964—given the time period, the movie is pretty brutal. Marvin and Gulager are creepy bad guys, Cassavetes delivers his usual fine work, and Dickinson displays her charms with aplomb. As for Reagan—well, let’s just say it’s not too difficult to buy him as a crook. In hindsight, given that this guy became a two-term U.S. president, his performance lends a “must-see” element to the picture.

Criterion gives us new high-definition digital restorations of both films (the 1964 version is in color and in 4:3 aspect ratio, since it was shot for television). They look terrific. The black and white contrasts in the ’46 version are especially sharp and unsettlingly beautiful. Almost all of the original supplements are here—Andrei Tarkovsky’s student film adaptation of the short story from 1956; a video interview with noir expert/writer, the late Stuart M. Kaminsky; a video interview with Clu Gulager; Stacy Keach reading Hemingway’s short story on audio; the Screen Directors’ Playhouse radio adaptation from 1949 featuring Lancaster and Shelley Winters; an audio excerpt from director Don Siegel’s autobiography read by Hampton Fancher; and trailers. The booklets feature essays by novelist Jonathan Lethem and critic Geoffrey O’Brien. Not sure why Criterion left off the production, publicity, and behind-the-scenes stills, actor biographies, production correspondence, Paul Schrader’s essay, and music and effects tracks, all which were on the original DVD release. If those things are important to you, then you may want to hold on to it.

But for the Blu-ray restorations alone, The Killers double feature is an excellent buy, especially for fans of film noir and crime pictures in general. 

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