The Killing (1956)

Tagline: These 5 Men Had a $2,000,000 Secret Until One of them told this Woman!

The Killing movie storyline. The tale is about a desperate gang of anti-hero misfits and lowlifes (in an ensemble cast) led by a grim, determined, and recently-released-from-jail con Johnny Clay (Hayden). The group devises and executes a complex, carefully-timed racetrack heist of $2 million – that goes terribly wrong, similar to Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (also with Hayden).

The plan is to cause simultaneous, diversionary confusion by shooting one of the racehorses in mid-race and instigating a bar fight, thereby allowing Johnny to rob the main track offices and seize the day’s takings.

The gang includes racetrack teller George Peatty (Cook), a pathetic wimp and loser who is easily tricked by his devious, scheming femme fatale wife Sherry (Windsor) into revealing the details of the heist to pass to her adulterous lover Val Cannon (Edwards, the future doctor Ben Casey on a TV series), who plans to take the loot at the rendezvous point once the robbery has been accomplished.

The entire movie is presented non-chronologically in a winding fashion (with flashforwards and flashbacks), and played out in a series of tense, black-comedy scenes with swift transitions. The doom-laden, voice-over dialogue was derived from Lionel White’s novel Clean Break.

The film has influenced many heist films, including the original Ocean’s Eleven (1960) (also remade in 2001). With excellent cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but ignored completely by the Academy, although this work would influence filmmakers for decades after – most notably Guy Ritchie and crime drama auteur Quentin Tarantino and his film Reservoir Dogs.

Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Timothy Carey, Kola Kwariani, Dorothy Adams, Herbert Ellis, Tito Vuolo
Screenplay by: Stanley Kubrick
Cinematography by: Lucien Ballard
Film Editing by: Betty Steinberg
Set Decoration by: Harry Reif
Art Direction by: Ruth Sobotka
Makeup Department: Robert Littlefield, Lillian Shore
Music by: Gerald Fried
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: May 19, 1956