The Killers

It's two, two, two films in one: that's right, Criterion's double-disc set features both Robert Siodmak's 1946 film noir classic The Killers and Don Siegel's 1964 update The Killers, both based--the latter very loosely--on Ernest Hemingway's short story (recently collected in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike). Filmed in glorious black and white, as noir aficionados say, the 1946 version opens, like the short story, with a pair of wiseguys (in both the smart aleck and hit men senses) arriving in a small town diner and announcing their intention to kill Ole "The Swede" Andersen (Burt Lancaster), who fails to show up for dinner at his usual hour--a missed appointment that prompts young Nick Adams (a Hemingway alter ego) to run to the Swede's boardinghouse to warn him…only to discover that the big guy, a former boxer, has no fight left in him and seems absolutely resigned to his fate. Although Hemingway's story tells us nothing about why the Swede is a marked man, and ends with Nick baffled by the idea of a guy accepting his own murder, the film uses the original as a jumping off point for an elaborate thriller in which an insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) recreates--Citizen Kane-style--the Swede's backstory through interviews that lead him closer and closer to femme fatale Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). In the 1964 version (the first made-for-TV movie, though it did not air due to the violence and the fact that the Kennedy assassination was still fresh in the public's mind), the story's focus shifts to the two killers--Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager--who literally shoot and ask questions later, first knocking off Johnny North (John Cassavetes) and then trying to learn who really wanted him dead and why--an odyssey that leads them to Ronald Reagan and Angie Dickinson (and, yes, this is that famous film in which the former smacks the latter right across the kisser--Reagan, incidentally, appeared in this movie as a favor but never liked it). Both discs boast superb digital transfers and the set features a number of excellent extras, including Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's 22-minute 1956 student film version of "The Killers," the 1949 Screen Director's Playhouse radio adaptation featuring Lancaster and Shelley Winters, a reading of the short story by Stacy Keach, an interview with mystery novelist Stuart Kaminsky (who talks about both the 1946 and 1964 versions), an interview with Clu Gulager (who reveals that Marvin played his final scene "drunk as a skunk"), and various essays. Both a felicitous pairing and a curriculum in a two-disc set (with the original story and both versions of the film), not to mention a solid bargain, The Killers is highly recommended. (R. Pitman)[Blu-ray/DVD Review—July 14, 2015—Criterion, 196 min., not rated, DVD: 2 discs, $29.95; Blu-ray: $39.95—Making their latest appearance on DVD and debuts on Blu-ray, 1946's and 1964's The Killers both sport fine transfers and uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray release. Extras include the 1949 Screen Directors' Playhouse radio adaptation starring Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters (30 min.), filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's 1956 student film short adaptation of The Killers (21 min.), an audio excerpt from director Don Siegel's autobiography A Siegel Film read by actor/director Hampton Fancher (20 min.), 2002 interviews with costar Clu Gulager (19 min.) and writer Stuart M. Kaminsky (18 min.), an audio recording of Stacy Keach reading Hemingway's short story (18 min.), trailers, and a booklet with essays by novelist Jonathan Lethem and critic Geoffrey O'Brien. Bottom line: this winning combo of adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's titular short story makes a welcome Blu-ray debut.]