The short blurb I read about The Killing (1956) claimed that it was the movie that made director Stanley Kubrick’s career.  It also asserted that it is the film to which all subsequent heist movies owe a debt.  These are bold statements, especially given the decorated (and I would add controversial) resume of Kubrick, and the popularity of robbery flicks.  I have also done no research to either refute or verify these assertions.  Whatever their veracity, these lines got my attention because I have a passing awareness of the importance of Kubrick and this kind of work to cinema.  Together, even if I had not heard of this movie before today, they make up some of the most well-known aspects of Hollywood.  These are the factors that went into today’s choice, even if I balked at the words in the title.  You will see why it is both an appropriate appellation, and misleading.

A narrator (Art Gilmore) voices the setting for The Killing, which is a horse race track in California.  Casing the joint, to borrow the heist terminology, is Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen).  Through him, you will meet the other confederates in this cabal.  While the film jumps around in time to do so, I am going to introduce you to them out of order to smooth over the plot.  The first couple you meet are the bartender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer) and the cashier, George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.).  They are each given information as to where to meet the brains of the operation, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden).  He is fresh out of jail, much to the relief of his girlfriend, Fay (Coleen Gray).  He tells her that he has one more big score lined up, and then they will fly away and get married.  The last person in their group is Officer Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia).  He has fallen in with the criminals he is supposed to arrest because he has debts he needs to pay.  Of all these, it is George who is the weakest.  He is married Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor), a woman of good looks who clearly does not respect her husband.  When he returns home after meeting with the other would-be robbers, she says all manner of disrespectful things to him.  He attempts to assuage her contempt by telling her about how he is about to be rich, which he hopes will gain some respect from her.  Because he has never lied to her, considering him too dull witted to do so, she believes that he has actually stumbled onto something big.  This is what she relates to Val Cannon (Vince Edwards), the man with whom she is sleeping behind her husband’s back.  He wants more information, which she promises to get out of her husband, so that Val can steal the money for himself and run off with Sherry.  While she stays close to George to get more details about the hold up out of him, Johnny goes around enlisting the help of a few outside players he needs in order to make his plan run smoothly.  The first of these is Maurice Oboukhoff (Kola Kwariani), a massive man who, oddly enough, hangs around a chess club all day long.  On the appointed day, Johnny wants Maurice to start a fight in the bar for a prearranged sum of money.  Another sub-accomplice, if you will, is Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey), a marksman also given some cash in order to shoot one of the horses in the race during which they are going to pull their job.  The last thing Johnny arranges is the place where the money is going to be picked up after it is stolen.  As for George, though he tries to keep Sherry in the dark about the date, she uses her wiles in order to get him to reveal it.  As for the actual robbery, everything seems to go according to plan.  Officer Kennan pulls up to the rear of the track in his squad car.  George is at his register, and Mike is behind the bar.  Nikki is at his sniper spot outside of the oval, after having had a run-in with the parking lot attendant (James Edwards).  Finally, Johnny is near the cash windows as the big race commences.  As the horses get out of the starting gate, Maurice picks his fight, which turns into a brawl with the entire track security team.  As the horses round the first bend, Nikki fells the lead runner, but is gunned down by police before he can make his getaway.  As this goes down, George lets Johnny into the employee area, where he retrieves a mask and a shotgun placed there by Mike.  He then proceeds to the money room, and forces the clerks to fill a large canvas duffel with all the cash in the area.  After forcing them into the adjacent locker room, he next changes into a different set of clothes and tosses the bag out of the window for Officer Kennan.  Exiting once more into the fan section, Johnny leaves with the evacuating crush of people.  Later, everyone else is awaiting Johnny’s arrival with their pilfered bills but he is late.  Instead, Val shows up with another armed man.  Pretty much everyone pulls a gun, and the lot shoots each other to death, though George limps away.  He has one last interaction with Sherry, who he knows by now had set them up, and turns his pistol on her before falling dead.  Johnny finally gets to their rendezvous, but seeing the police sirens swirling, realizes that something has gone wrong.  What it means is that he gets all the loot to himself, but also more money to carry.  He buys a new suitcase for this purpose and meets Fay at the airport.  He understandably wants to keep the bag with him, but airport personnel force him to check it.  As they are about to board the plane, he watches in horror as a toy poodle gets loose from its owner and spooks the luggage handler.  I say “horror” because this causes the case to crash to the ground, spilling the millions of dollars into the air.  Fay and Johnny try to leave, but two plane clothes officers catch up to them as the film ends.

The easiest thing to say about The Killing is that it demonstrates once more that crime does not pay.  One of the motivating factors that seems to unite all the characters is their desire to become rich.  In their own way, they are all dissatisfied with their lives of relative poverty and they think that this heist is the only way to improve their lot.  Often you hear them dreaming about how they will soon be enjoying the trappings of luxury.  This includes Sherry.  One could point to her as a villain in this movie, but I am not sure who you could call a protagonist.  To state the obvious, Faith says that a person should be more satisfied with their lot in life.  That is a general way of putting it.  That does not mean people should stop striving for more, or that doing so is sinful.  I know of plenty of well-off Catholics, and they are among the most generous people I know.  And therein lies the rub.  Riches by themselves are not sinful, but how you obtain them can be.  Clearly, the way Johnny and company are going about it would not be how God would like one to do so.  Instead, the Bible encourages us to see the reward in our mere effort.  An honest living is close to Godliness, especially one that contributes to the well-being of others.  What the characters in the movie do is take from the hard work of others, albeit from a place where they are probably throwing away their money.  However, this is their choice, and they are hoping that they might be blessed by a little extra sum.  Though the film contains no kind of Christian commentary, I like to think that Johnny realizes the error of his ways as the police catch up with him at the end.

By watching The Killing, I am getting closer to seeing the entirety of Kubrick’s filmography.  I am not sure that this is a good thing, though his early work is relatively benign.  I do hope to avoid some of his other work that I have yet to review.  In the meantime, you are pretty safe in watching this one.