Two From Siodmak: The Killers & Criss Cross

Robert Siod­mak 1948

While such stu­dios as Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury Fox, RKO, Para­mount, United Artists and even MGM, pro­duced the pro­fu­sion of movies in the Film Noir cycle, it was Uni­ver­sal who dis­pensed two gen­uine pearls of the genre…
The Killers (1946), and Criss Cross (1949).

Here I dis­cuss these two intrigu­ing and well dis­ci­plined films, both pro­duced by Uni­ver­sal and both directed by Robert Siod­mak. Siod­mak like the other Ger­man emi­gre direc­tors Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Otto Pre­minger dom­i­nated the field of Film Noir. Robert Siodmak’s Noir cred­its also include Phan­tom Lady (1943), Cry of the City (1948), and The File on Thelma Jor­don (1949), but his sin­gle Oscar® nom­i­na­tion was for The Killers based loosely on the Ernest Hem­ing­way short story of the same name.

The Killers, opens as a pair of hired killers drift into a small New Jer­sey town with the inten­tion of gun­ning down a local gas sta­tion atten­dant named Swede, Burt Lan­caster in his film debut. The Killers await their prey at the local diner. When he fails to appear as sched­uled they locate the board­ing house where he lives, force their way into his room where he sto­ically awaits them. Mak­ing no attempt to escape, he is killed in a blaze of gun­fire. His final words, “I did some­thing wrong—once.” The film unfolds with sim­i­lar dis­con­nected flash­back tech­niques used ear­lier in Cit­i­zen Kane (1941), and mas­ter­fully applied here. Read more

Double Indemnity & Film Noir

The per­fect Film Noir, weak man, strong woman

By the fall of 1943, Bar­bara Stan­wyck had starred in 43 films. She had shown ver­sa­til­ity with many styles. How­ever, there remained one type of role, and an inte­gral part of the spec­trum of any actress, that she had never done, and the time seemed right for it. It was still early enough in cin­ema his­tory for audi­ences to be shaken up by a thor­oughly evil woman.Stanwyck was well aware of the poten­tial in the role of Phyl­lis Diet­rich­son in Billy Wilder’s Dou­ble Indem­nity, Wilder remarked later how Bar­bara jumped at the chance of play­ing it. In an inter­view for Movie Digest in 1972, Bar­bara, recalled, “when Billy Wilder sent me the script of Dou­ble Indem­nity, and I read it, I real­ized that I had never played an out–and–out killer. I had played medium heav­ies, but never an out–and–out killer. And because it was an unsym­pa­thetic char­ac­ter, I was a lit­tle fright­ened of it. I went to his office, and I said to him, I love the script and I love you, but I’m a lit­tle afraid, after all these years of play­ing hero­ines to play the part of an out–and–out cold– blooded killer… Read more

Out of the Past: An In-depth Review

Vir­ginia Hus­ton, Robert Mitchum

In the lit­tle town of Bridge­port, Cal­i­for­nia, Jeff Bai­ley runs a gas sta­tion with the assis­tance of a mute boy, Jimmy, and courts Ann. One autumn day, Joe Ste­fanos dri­ves into town and informs Jeff that Whit Ster­lin a rack­e­teer, wants to see him. Jeff relates his life’s story to Ann as they drive to Sterling’s Lake Tahoe man­sion. As a pri­vate detec­tive named Jeff Markham, he was hired to find Sterling’s mis­tress, Kathie Mof­fett, who had shot Ster­ling and escaped with $40,000. Jeff found Kathie in Mex­ico but fell in love with her and believed her claim that she did not steal any money. They moved to San Fran­cisco and lived anony­mously until Fisher, Jeff’s for­mer part­ner, found them. Kathie killed Fisher and Jeff dis­cov­ered evi­dence that proved she lied about the money. Dis­il­lu­sioned, Jeff moved to his new life at Bridge­port. Arriv­ing at Sterling’s, Jeff assures Ann before she departs that he no longer loves Kathie. Meet­ing with Ster­ling, Jeff is sur­prised to see Kathie. She secretly tells him that Ster­ling is black­mail­ing her about Fisher’s mur­der to stay with him. The rack­e­teer black­mails Jeff to obtain tax records from Eels, a rene­gade accoun­tant of Sterling’s gang, but Jeff is being used as a patsy: Eels is to be killed by Ste­fanos, who will frame Jeff for the mur­der. Read more