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Topic: The Killers (1964 film)


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In the News (Tue 15 Dec 09)

  
  Ernest Hemingway's The Killers (1964) | The A.V. Club
Both films take the idea of a passive victim as a jumping-off point into investigating the past, with flashback structures that piece the man's life together, but otherwise, they're a study in contrasts.
In contrast to the original film, Marvin's bafflement at Cassavetes' strange passivity leads him to conduct the investigation himself (and perhaps recover the missing million to boot), which makes for a much stronger character piece.
Better still are a series of correspondences for the 1964 version, including hilarious script notes from the NBC censors, a reassuring letter from Siegel to Dickinson apologizing for the vicious reviews, and a brilliant essay from Siegel to the studio brass that picks apart the original with stunning precision.
www.avclub.com /content/node/6888/print   (754 words)

  
 DVD Verdict Review - The Killers: Criterion Collection
That's a shame, because it is a hallmark film and I wish the opening scenes hadn't felt so wooden to me. It is ironic that the strength of the 1956 film is its absolute adherence to Hemingway, while my least favorite part of the 1946 version is the same material.
This thorough treatise on film noir is a cohesive and influential landmark of cinematic criticism.
Furthermore, any killers worth their salt would have waited for the Swede to walk in, followed him out, and capped him on the sidewalk or in his apartment.
www.dvdverdict.com /printer/killers.php   (2695 words)

  
 The John Williams Web Pages: The Killers
A remake of the the 1946 film of the same name (which in turn was loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's (very) short story), The Killers almost made TV history as the first made-for-television movie; it was produced by Universal's Revue Studios for NBC's Project 120.
The film tends to slow down during the flashback sequences, but is compelling whenever Marvin and Gulager are on screen.
The film has been issued on VHS (MCA 55014) and was released on Laserdisc only as a Japanese import (with subtitles).
www.johnwilliams.org /compositions/killers.html   (494 words)

  
 SacTicket // DVD/Video
For this film version -- which was written primarily by John Huston ("The Maltese Falcon"), though not credited to him due to Huston's contract with a rival studio -- the murder of The Swede represents only the start of a mystery that unfolds, piece by piece, in flashbacks.
The film is propelled by the stirring performances of Lancaster, O'Brien and Gardner, as well as Sam Levene as a police detective who was a childhood friend of The Swede, Virginia Christine (the future Mrs.
The 1964 remake by Don Siegel (best known as the director of the earlier "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and the later "Dirty Harry") was not similarly honored.
www.sacticket.com /static/movies/dvd_video/hitman.html   (1186 words)

  
 DVD Breakdown | The Killers (1946 / 1964)
Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers is an open-ended twelve-page miniature masterpiece that draws heavily on Hollywood gangster movie tropes and figures in its tantalizing glimpse of a man who for reasons unknown won't run from a pair of hired killers.
Siegel's later effort is also a film typical of its time, originally made for TV but exhibited theatrically as it was deemed overly violent for TV in the wake of JFK's assassination.
The 1964 film has the vivid, brightly lit colors of TV productions of its era, and carries even less print damage or graininess.
www.dvdbreakdown.com /titles/killers.html   (931 words)

  
 The Killers (1964 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Killers, sometimes called Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, released by Universal Studios in 1964, was Hollywood's second adaptation of the Hemingway short story.
The 1964 Killers was the first movie ever to be "made for TV", but NBC judged it too violent to broadcast, and Universal released the movie in theaters instead.
During filming, according to the DVD commentary, leading lady Angie Dickinson received the news that her friend (and rumored romantic partner) President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/The_Killers_(1964_film)   (408 words)

  
 The Killers (1946): Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien - PopMatters Film Review
His last film, released after his early death from a heart attack, was Naked City (1948), later the inspiration of a 1960s television series.
He appreciated Hellinger's 1946 transformation of his 1927 short story, "The Killers." In it, Hemingway had distilled a number of his obsessions, most notably, "grace under pressure." The taciturn Swede, hunted by the eponymous hoodlums, refuses to flee his fate or provide any rationale for his imminent demise.
The episode in which the killers attack Reardon in a bar is crisp and to the point, showing how gunplay is often over almost as soon as it starts.
www.popmatters.com /film/reviews/k/killers-dvd.shtml   (1566 words)

  
 The DVD Journal | Reviews : The Killers: The Criterion Collection
Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story "The Killers" is short and sweet, a lean reduction by the literary master of the pulpy fiction of his contemporaries.
While reveling in the tough dialogue of Dashiel Hammett's ilk, "The Killers" is short on plot, focusing instead on small situations: on the disconnect between brutal big-city killers and small-town folk, and the psychological mystery of a victim lying in dispirited wait.
Andrei Tarkovsky's 20-minute student film of Hemingway's story is the most faithful to the text — it is, in fact, almost literal — but suffers instead from weak student performances, which exacerbate the strains of Tarkovsky's, er, patient, style.
www.dvdjournal.com /reviews/k/killers_cc.shtml   (1036 words)

  
 dOc DVD Review: The Killers (1946/64)
It was first filmed in 1946, at the peak of noir filmmaking in Hollywood; the second version was produced in 1964, originally conceived of as the first made-for-television movie.
This film was the coming-out party for not one but two iconic screen presences: Burt Lancaster is brooding and tough as the Swede, a man whose doom can be seen in his eyes, even as he gazes at the girl he loves.
The Killers is notable for, among other things, being the last film that Ronald Reagan made before he entered politics, and, as Jack Browning, he makes a surprisingly menacing bad guy.
www.digitallyobsessed.com /showreview.php3?ID=4652   (2377 words)

  
 The Killers (1964)
Two hired killers in blue and wearing conspicuous heavy fl shades enter the Sage House of the Blind, proceed to harass, then rough-up the blind secretary when she's slow in telling them where "Jerry Nicols" is. They go upstairs, start looking in the classrooms with about as much subtly as stockmen at the abattoir...
Cut To: the killers have detoured to Miami and the West Palm Beach specialty garage of one Bob Sylvester (Claude Atkins), former partner of Johnny North, the mechanic who set the trim of the muscle AC sports car North drove in competition.
That she plays Judas to his Christ is perhaps the key to understanding his passivity when the two killers come for him in the school for the blind.
www.culturecourt.com /F/Noir/Killers64.htm   (1836 words)

  
 Film History of the 1960s
It was a stark fl-and-white film that starred Laurence Harvey as a Korean War hero/veteran ("the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known...") who was brain-washed by the Communists, and upon his return to the US was programmed to kill on command and attempt a political assassination.
His next film was one of the most whimsical of the late 60s films that symbolized the anti-war, counter-cultural movement.
After starring in a few films to pay the bills (e.g., The Killers (1964), Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Rosemary's Baby (1968)), writer/director Cassavetes also financed another independent cinema verite film Faces (1968) in which he cast his wife Gena Rowlands as one of the lead characters.
www.filmsite.org /60sintro3.html   (1842 words)

  
 The Killers (1946)
The Killers (1946), a neglected screen classic from director Robert Siodmak, is an intense, hard-edged, stylish film noir of robbery, unrequited love, brutal betrayal and double-cross.
Former Broadway news reporter/columnist-later-independent film producer Mark Hellinger, with his first film for Universal, was known for stark, hard-boiled crime-gangster films (e.g., The Roaring Twenties (1939), High Sierra (1941), Brute Force (1947), and The Naked City (1948)).
The film opens with a quintessential sequence or prologue, the one faithfully borrowed from Hemingway's short story about two hit men (the 'killers' of the film's title) seeking a doomed man in a small town.
www.filmsite.org /killers.html   (1788 words)

  
 Deep Discount DVD   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
Ernest Hemingway's short story THE KILLERS was turned into two memorable films noir at the beginning and the end of the high period of the genre.
The original 1946, directed by Robert Siodmak, version stars Burt Lancaster as "the Swede," an aging boxer who is brought in on for an underground job.
The 1964 Don Siegel version stars Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as a pari of gunmen scouring a seedy underworld.
www.deepdiscountdvd.com /dvd.cfm?itemid=HVD001586   (72 words)

  
 Virus Killers -- Recommendations and Resources   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
''Killer 7'' is a video game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo GameCube and the PlayStation 2 and the last game in the exclusive "Capcom 5" deal with Nintendo.
Due July 7, 2005 (7/7), ''Killer 7'' is a highly anticipated title for its mysterious plot, stylish cel-shaded graphics, and un-orthodox gameplay.
Unlike most artistic presentations of multiple personalities, Harman does not just think he is someone else; rather, he actually takes on the physical appearance and abilities of his personalities in the game.
www.becomingapediatrician.com /health/160/virus-killers.html   (896 words)

  
 The Austin Chronicle Screens: Review - The Killers (Double-Disc Special Edition)
Criterion Collection, $39.95 Anyone who needs reminding of the glory that was film noir, and the belly flop that was 1960s cinema, need only rent the 2-DVD set of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers, filmed in 1946 and 1964 by Robert Siodmak and Don Siegel, respectively.
The 1964 version, on the other hand, was very much a product of the giddy new television age.
Cheap and flashy, this Killers was actually supposed to be the first made-for-TV movie but was deemed too violent in the post JFK assassination era and released theatrically instead.
www.austinchronicle.com /gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid:159132   (486 words)

  
 The Killers (1964)
Don Siegel, who directed the made-for-TV version but couldn't make the first film because he was under contract, admits in one of the DVD's extras that the 1946 film "tailed off" after the chilling opening that remained faithful to Hemingway's story.
In an excellent interview made for this DVD, Clu Gulager, who plays one of the killers in the 1964 version, candidly admits that to call the remake "great" would be "stretching a point." But he gives four reasons why the 1964 version of The Killers was significant.
The film is presented in 1.33:1 ratio, as it appeared in theaters, and beautifully restored and remastered from a 35mm nitrate fine-grain master positive.
www.reel.com /movie.asp?MID=5158&PID=10106552&buy=closed&Tab=reviews&CID=18   (1484 words)

  
 The Killers Film Review - Time Out Film
Not exactly a remake of Siodmak's film, but a very similar adaptation of Hemingway's short story, except that the old noir ambience has given way to broad daylight, with the two killers now characterised as corporate executives rather than as emblematic figures from the shadows.
A familiar tale of robbery and betrayal unfolds, not enhanced by the glossy colour but given a terrific boost by the fact that the two killers stick around (since they now conduct the investigation themselves in the interests of better business efficiency) and are superbly characterised by Marvin and Gulager.
Originally made for TV, the film was tactfully switched to cinema release following the JFK assassination.
www.timeout.com /film/78681.html   (199 words)

  
 Here's the rest of him Human Events - Find Articles   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
On closer examination, many of the themes that resonate in the majority of Ronald Reagan's movies patriotism, liberty, justice, sacrifice, loyalty, and idealism - are in keeping with the principles by which he lived his life, and the ones he used to shape the public policy of his presidency.
In "The Killers," a 1964 film based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, Reagan played an underworld boss.
The film is notable mostly because it is the only time he was ever a villain - in one scene he famously slaps another president's real-life girlfriend, Angie Dickinson - and because it was his last picture.
www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200105/ai_n8963626   (944 words)

  
 Compare Prices and Read Reviews on The Killers at Epinions.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
Be that as it may, The Killers is an action lover's treat from the king of action directors, Don Siegel.
The rest of the film is largely comprised of flashbacks, as the characters explain what happened as Lee and Clu catch up with them.
The Killers is film noir, that is there are no good guys, only bad guys.
www.epinions.com /content_29390311044   (535 words)

  
 Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | The Gipper's dark side
Ronald Reagan in the 1964 film "The Killers."
That's Ronald Reagan speaking, in his last film role as mobster Jack Browning in Don Siegel's 1964 "The Killers." It was the only time Reagan ever played a heavy, and according to co-star Clu Gulager, he despised the film.
Cold, mean, and unrelievedly brutal, "The Killers" radiates cynicism and contempt and cruddiness.
archive.salon.com /ent/feature/2004/06/08/killers   (295 words)

  
 Amazon.com: The Killers - Criterion Collection: DVD: Claude Akins,Hall Brock,John Cassavetes,Virginia Christine,John ...   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
In this film noir, two hitmen want to find out why their latest victim (a race car driver!) "just stood there and took it" when they came to shoot him.
Siegal's "The Killers" was planned as the original TV Movie, but, possibly, in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, the film was deemed to be too violent, the subject matter of two gunmen committing cold-blooded murder just too much for network television.
It is a really outstanding commentary on what makes this film something special, and after watching it I am left with a respect for Gulager's brains and judgement which I didn't have, and had no reason to have, before.
www.amazon.com /Killers-Criterion-Collection-Claude-Akins/dp/B00007ELDG   (2165 words)

  
 The Killers (1964)
A violent thriller of double-crossing and assassination, The Killers pivots on the use of extended flashbacks.
The only down sides are that the characters are a bit thin and that the back-projection is totally lousy, which is a shame when there's a lot if fast-car action to be seen.
Still, this doesn't prevent The Killers building a great knot of tension as it surfs on a wave of violence (the ending is great, too).
www.film.u-net.com /Movies/Reviews/Killers_The.html   (673 words)

  
 KILLERS
From here the film sticks quite faithfully to the Hemingway story on which it’s based, but that enigmatic tale is used up in about ten minutes of film stock.
Though born in Tennessee, Siodmak learned his craft in the fertile golden age of the UFA Germany of the 20s and 30s, a la future Hollywood denizens Lang, Wilder, Edgar (Edward G.) Ullmer, Fred Zinnemann, etc. It shows.
The Killers was remade in 1964 (originally for TV, which found it too violent and flick-passed it back to cinemas) by Don Siegel in another great film which bears almost no resemblance to this original, but does find later echoes in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
www.crimeculture.com /Contents/FilmReviews/Killers.htm   (426 words)

  
 Killers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Killers (album), the name of the second album from British heavy metal band Iron Maiden
Killers (KISS album), the name of the 1982 greatest hits album from the American glam rock band KISS
Killers (movie), a 2003 compilation of five short films by Japanese directors.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Killers   (213 words)

  
 The Killers (1964) Movie Poster
Well, it's "film noir" with "too bright" lighting indoors, and most of the location scenes are filmed during the daylight hours, sorta like an episode of the old Dragnet TV series.
The only bad part about the flic is that those evil, wicked, mean, and nasty, albeit compassionately inquisitive, bad-guys, Charlie and Lee, kill the racing driver at the beginning of the flic, which does sort put the ky-bosh on further automotive action.
For some reason, I always thought this flic was a "made for TV special" from the way that it was filmed.
www.sd455.com /moviekillers.htm   (928 words)

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