The Killing. Stanley Kubrick.

After last night's noir I decided to switch it up a bit with Stanley Kubrick's 1956 film, The Killing. I actually thought this was a film that I had seen a clip of and wanted to see in full, but am not remembering that the one I'm thinking of is the Killer's Kiss. I just checked and it is now on Netflix Instant Watch so I'll have to watch it sometime soon.

Despite my disappointment in not watching what I was hoping I would be watching, the film made me realize that Kubrick is one director to whom I've never given enough credit. When I watched A Clockwork Orange I was probably a freshman in high school and it was like the weirdest thing I'd ever watched at that point and from that point on that's all I knew of Kubrick. Wow, so wrong! At that age I hadn't even begun to think about how a director shoots his or her movies and the effect that it has on the viewer. I've since seen more of his films and my favourite is definitely "Paths of Glory". What a frustrating film to watch. And that's what makes it so brilliant. The sets are simple and the shots are simple, but how in the world Kubrick was able to harness the tone so well is enough to represent all his brilliance.

Back to The Killing: had a lot of shots typical in a Kubrick film. Very direct, uncomplicated. I wasn't enthralled with the plot so much and the ending was a let down, but his take on the heist was interesting: a team pulled it together, but ultimately it was one man in a crazy mask in the robbery. I can't think of any films before this that employed the idea of using scary ass masks during a takeover/heist. Would have to research that to know for sure. It'd actually be really interesting to know what movie started the trend that is still being used today, up to that movie that just came out -- The Town.

Time for some stills.