The Killers (1946)

Directed by Robert Siodmak. Starring Burt Lancaster, Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker, Ava Gardner, Sam Levene, Jack Lambert, Virginia Christie, Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Phil Brown, Jeff Corey, Donald MacBride.

Rock-solid crime-noir expanded from a Hemingway short story (one of the few adaptations of his work during his lifetime he actually liked), presented largely in flashback after Lancaster, consigned to his fate, fails to put up a fight as a pair of killers knock him off in the riveting opening scene. Turns out, he was an ex-fighter who got mixed up with gangsters and Gardner’s dangerous dame, and although the story arc and themes are all pretty standard for the genre, they’re put across with requisite volumes of force and style to stand out. Lancaster’s cagey but doomed portrayal (his film debut) helps, too, although Gardner is all surface area, and reveals herself to be out of her depths whenever she switches from inscrutable beauty to venomous self-preservation. Miklós Rózsa’s score will sound very familiar to fans of TV’s “Dragnet”. John Huston and Richard Brooks both went unbilled for their script contributions. Remade by Don Siegel in 1964.

79/100