The Killing (1956)

By gawd that’s what film is for! I just happened to catch the tail end of this Sunday morning treat, and what a treat it was! Sterling Hayden and his mugs pull off the ultimate heist, they take a racetrack for a cool $2 million dollars. They were gonna get away with it too, but somebody told a dame! A secret is no longer a secret if you told a woman. Elisha Cook tells Marie Windsor who then tells her thugs and they all die in a horrible shootout à la Reservoir Dogs.

Sterling Hayden who hadn’t arrived yet with the dough, is the lone survivor. He’s at the airport with a large suitcase (the $2 mil), and the airline will not let this huge suitcase be carry on! After much arguing Hayden agrees to let it be checked luggage. As he’s standing at the gate on the tarmac, he’s watching his suitcase precariously balanced on the luggage tram as it heads out to the idling plane.

‘Tinkles’ the dog picks that moment to leap out of Aunt Martha’s arms and bolts in front of the tram driver who swerves to avoid the dog. The suitcase with the loot falls to the taxiway breaking open in the fall. The prop wash of the idling planes immediately blows the $2 million all over creation! A decidedly dejected Hayden watches in disbelief, slowly walking to the exit before authorities figure out it was his suitcase.

The ‘film noir’ examples shown on Turner Classic Movies never received the accolades or the budgets of the studio darlings. Filmed in less expensive black and white and cast with underdogs, they often over achieved compared to the glossy, vacuous big budget films when looked at with the hindsight that 60 or 70 years brings. Director Stanley Kubrick himself on Taxi Driver had to film the aftermath of the bodies following the big shootout (the films union cameraman refusing to do the handheld camerawork Kubrick wanted).

The climatic scene where the fortune blows down the runway, reminiscent of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the gold dust blows helplessly across the desert. The ill-gotten gain never to be had by anyone and keeping the curse alive. No, film noir went beyond the clichés, the remakes, the boring storylines. Film noir was honest about their film’s motivations; greed and sex. I respect that. The rest of the Hollywood crap factory is about deceptions.