Vince Barnett | The Killers | Dir. Robert Siodmark | 1946 | 103 mins

What’s not to like? Directed by Robert Siodmark, an accomplished noir director, adapted from an Ernest Hemingway short story, and starring Burt Lancaster (the Swede) and Ava Gardner (Kitty Collins). Include a score by the masterful Miklós Rózsa and stellar minor performances by Edmond O’Brien (Jim Riordan), Sam Levene (Lt. Sam Lubinsky), Jack Lambert (‘Dum-Dum’ Clarke) and Albert Dekker (‘Big Jim’ Colfax), and The Killers effortlessly hits noir greatness. Siodmark was expert at weaving multiple parts into a whole and the plot is formally complex yet satisfyingly coherent, including several extended flashbacks––one of which ingeniously conveys the central single-shot heist through the diegetic narration of a newspaper report. The celebrated opening sequence alone is worth the ticket, with two gnarly big-city contract killers rudely descending upon a small-town diner, upsetting everything the local population has ever known about common decency. They’ve come to find ‘the Swede’, in hiding after a duplicitous caper-gone-wrong six years previously. The torpedoes execute the Swede within the first 10 minutes, and the questions that drive the remaining narrative are: who and why? 

Reardon, a life-insurance investigator, digs deep and patiently, providing the audience with a calm, methodical point-of-identification from which to comprehend the 

narrative as it unfolds in a series of outstanding set-pieces. The Swede is a former boxer caught up with professional gangsters after his bust hand ruins his career. He meets and falls immediately and irrevocably for the devastating Kitty Collins, an archetypal femme fatale, and is soon serving three years for her stolen jewellery. When he gets out, the Swede is called to a meeting with ‘Big Jim’ Colfax and his gangster acquaintances, including the pitiless ‘Dum-Dum’ Clarke, played by Jack Lambert, a real specialist in stone-faced movie tough guys. Kitty Collins is there too. Then the robbery. Then what? The plot is all about connecting the Swede’s murder with these gradually disclosed narrative threads.   

A long movie by noir standards, the time is used expertly by Siodmark to develop the characters, major and minor, within a digressive, fractured narrative that goes well beyond standard plot exposition. Vince Barnett’s turn as ‘Charleston’ is a model of a minor character done well. Charleston is identified dismissively to Riordan as some ‘old-time hoodlum’ at the Swede’s funeral, and we soon find them in a snooker bar with Charleston, boasting he won’t talk while being plied with yet more booze. This initially cliched set-up promptly gives way to a more emotionally nuanced performance as Charleston describes his close relationship with the Swede and a seamless dissolve throws us from the snooker rooms to the prison room they shared. 

In the superbly blocked and edited jail scene, the Swede lies in bed anxiously rubbing a silk scarf given to him by Kitty while Charleston gently ruminates on the stars to allay sleepless nights. This passion, he recounts to the Swede, turned into melancholic study of astronomy in the prison library: “I don’t guess there’s a better place in the whole world for learning about stars…than stir”. Within just a few moments the ‘old drunk’, seemingly easily duped by booze, is transformed into a wise and imaginative soul dreamily reflecting on his own position in a much larger drama: “Jupiter is to the earth like a football is to a marble. That big. And on the other hand, Mars ain’t no bigger than a bee. That small”.  

While the gaze of the elder Charleston is external and calm, out towards the starry constellations, the younger Swede’s gaze is relentlessly internal and anxious, fixated on Kitty and her whereabouts. Charleston is getting out of prison earlier than the Swede and Barnett conveys a tremendous sense of compassion when his friend the Swede asks him to check up on Kitty. With the greatest care he tentatively recalls the times he “studied up on girls” when he wasn’t in prison, and carefully intimates that when a girl doesn’t write to a man in prison “that doesn’t mean she’s sick…not necessarily”. Barnett’s skill in imparting this potentially heart-breaking news to the Swede is a remarkable portrayal of empathy and tenderness, firmly establishing his role as a trusted confidant of the Swede. 

Back in the snooker hall, Riordan enquires when a particular incident happened to a by-now thoroughly pasted Charleston. His disarming fateful candour brings a wry smile to Riordan’s face and provides another great line: “Mister, when it comes to dates, 1492 is the only one I can remember, I can tell you what was the last time but not where or when or who was present”. Nevertheless, Charleston does recall the ‘what’ when he recounts the meeting that he and the Swede attended with the gangsters (and Kitty) before the payroll job. Barnett reveals another side of Charleston when he calmly and clearly gives his reasons for pulling out of the robbery, and we realise he’s a man of proven experience treated with great respect by his peers. On his way out, glancing over at Kitty, he quietly warns the Swede that he’s about to land himself in trouble, but he knows the Swede is doomed. Outside, he hangs around the door like an old beat dog waiting for a master––a master that will never come home again.  

The Killers is rightly famous for providing Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner with their first major roles on screen, with both fantastic, especially Gardner’s deliciously casual and calculating performance as a femme fatale par excellence. Yet Siodmark’s aptitude with minor actors is renowned and Vince Barnett’s turn as Charleston displays the immense skill he developed making limited screen-time work in hundreds of (often uncredited) bit-part performances as careworn ‘little-men’ (undertakers, janitors, prisoners, bartenders and drunks). Charleston reveals the most of all about the Swede’s ill-fated arc in The Killers and this is largely down to Barnett’s compassionate and complex portrayal of a nominally careworn ‘little-man’, too often delivered as an afterthought to the main action.

Neil Gray.

View Movie at: https://archive.org/details/thekillers1946usafeaturingburtlancasteravagardneredmondobrienfilmnoirfullmovie_202001 

Walter Baldwin | Cry of The City | 1948 | 95 mins

About a third of the way through Robert Siodmak’s Cry of The City, we find small-time thief Martin Rome (Richard Conte) stuck in a prison hospital awaiting the trial which will undoubtedly send him to the electric chair. He’s been badly wounded in a shoot-out that resulted in him killing a cop, which is why he’s going to fry. As if this wasn’t enough, he’s also increasingly worried for the safety of his sweetly innocent (and shockingly young) girlfriend Teena, who the police want to question in relation to another killing which Martin didn’t do. There is also the matter of a bent lawyer who believes Teena could be tortured into confessing this murder, thereby letting his guilty client off the hook. 

Martin desperately needs a way out of the prison hospital but for the time being he is stuck arguing about the cost of getting his bed sheets changed with a bullish guard called Ledbetter. As the two men squabble, a third man is seen mopping the floor between them. During the dispute the man flashes a signal to Martin to let him know he can get his sheets changed for a dollar less than Ledbetter is proposing. Martin haggles and gets the price down, but as Ledbetter leaves he walks into the floor-mopper’s bucket, leading the disgruntled guard to unleash a torrent of abuse at the poor guy. Once Leadbetter is out of earshot this put-upon character offloads his woes to Martin about Leadbetter constantly calling him names. Martin tells him not to worry, that Ledbetter is just a “big boob”, the old boy likes this and with a grin repeats the insult then waddles over to Martin and introduces himself proudly as Orvy (Walter Baldwin), a trustee of the prison. 

There is a great subtle physicality to Baldwin’s performance which gives it a realism so often missing from the ‘simple soul’ character that he is portraying, keeping the whole thing from slipping into parody. It’s already a memorable performance and he’s only been on screen a minute. But then comes the clincher! Orvy leans in, his demeanour suddenly changes, and a shrewd confidence takes over his face as he asks: “Wanna break out of here Marty?” It’s a great noir moment, as Orvy’s initial semi-comic relief character suddenly become another scheming noir hustler. He lays out his plan of how Rome can escape and how this will inevitably mean the sacking of Leadbetter. Orvy’s out for revenge and he's thought it all out. For a moment he’s suddenly the brains of the operation, seducing Rome into his scheme. It’s a fine bit of acting, the balancing act of the separate aspects of Orvy’s character is handled deftly, one constantly present in the other. 

The theme of duplicitous personality is constantly present throughout Cry of The City, from the sudden switch of Niles the lawyer from jokey charmer at the start of one scene to the leering deliverer of repugnant threats by the end of it; to Martin’s kid brother who is all wannabe street hoodlum until things come to a head and the real sweet sensitive kid we’ve suspected was there all along is revealed. The main emblem of this trait though is Martin who, by the end, is only vainly trying to fool himself that he could be the loving partner to his sweet innocent Teena. There are numerous great performances (with Berry Kroeger, who had one of the best sneers in noir, excelling as the vile Niles) but for all his brief time on screen it’s Baldwin and the character of Orvy that stands out. With the other characters you see it coming, the bent lawyer, the tough kid who ain’t so tough, and the crook who thinks he can change are all staple noir types, but to take a loveable child-like character who “writes like a three-year-old” and give him a cold streak of devious intelligence is not something you see too often. And Baldwin is pitch perfect.  

Baldwin had been a prolific small parts actor who, after some time in theatre, began a busy film career in his fifties, racking up near a hundred film parts in the 1940s alone. His roles were mostly amenable kindly grandpa types, often in romantic comedies and he was resoundingly not a noir regular, although he does turn up in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) as an uncharacteristically gruff garage owner. However, with the role of Orvy, Baldwin shows he was an actor capable of memorably nuanced and powerful performances, something it seems he was rarely given the opportunity to explore. There’s a moment just before Richard Conte’s character makes his bid to escape, where he grabs Orvy’s collar and asks him straight if he’s sure his plan will work. When Orvy replies, with sly malevolence, “sure, I’ve been working on it”, the blood runs cold and you wonder what Baldwin could have done with a really nasty role. 

Sandy Milroy.

View Movie here: https://archive.org/details/cry-of-the-city-1948_202008