A Film Canon

The Killers draws on Citizen Kane to take noir dislocation to its logical conclusion; or, rather, translates cinematographer Elwood Bredell's exquisite dislocations of light and shade into the narrative fabric, which is structured around eleven moments in the course of Jim Reardon's (Edmond O'Brien) investigation into the murder of "Swede" Anderson (Burt Lancaster). Unlike Kane, however, this investigation is confined to the conditions of death, and conducted merely to reduce an insurance company's average rate by one-tenth of a cent, with the result that "Swede" simply becomes the locus of two forms of objectification, both of which assign him an illusory significance, as well as sharing a series of motifs (particularly the ominous ascent of a staircase) that ultimately identifies them; big business as crime, or even terror. The result is the most debilitated, abstracted noir protagonist to date, around whom a series of subsidiary debilitations clarify "the double cross to end all double crosses" as a mere instance of this amorphous conspiratorial presence. Nevertheless, Siodmak gestures towards two possible sources of visceral reprieve - boxing and the performance of a heist - clarifying the imminent proliferation of these sub-genres as a particularly concerted attempt to grapple with post-war pessimism, while the pervasive critique of the institution ensures that the femme fatale's (Ava Gardner) poison extends to marriage, rather than just love, removing both from any redemptive potential.