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Part 2: Corruption as a social phenomenon

Corruption and dreams of racing against time: Stanley Kubrick’s heist film The Killing (1956)

Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard

Abstract

This paper is a study of corruption in Stanley Kubrick’s heist film noir The Killing (1956). It discusses the main theme of the plot: the perversion of legal gambling by a gangster in order to steal the money from the race-track at the right moment, and run. Other members of his team are tempted by their own secret plot, which causes many deaths among them. An ironical twist in the gangster’s last attempt at escape shows his major error has been to believe he could corrupt the laws of universal Time.

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Introduction

  • 1 The Killing (French title: L’Ultime Razzia) 1956; 85 min., black and white, U.S., shot in Hollywood (...)

1In Stanley Kubrick’s early film, The Killing (1956),1 the action takes place on a short Saturday afternoon at a race-track. We see in parallel the horses being hurried by their jockeys and struggling madly to get ahead of one another, and, in reaction, the crowd’s excitement at the prospect of winning back the money which they have gambled with great additional profit, as the film’s title announces: a ‘killing’ means winning a bet in race track slang.

2But in addition to these exciting events, we follow several sub-plots which tell a different story altogether, a story of corruption, i.e., ‘a perversion of a system from its original state’ (OED). It is embodied by Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), a gangster who shamelessly destroys other people’s lives in order to make his secret dream come true, while having rather naively planned his future happiness. We see him telling his girl-friend Fay (Coleen Gray) (S 3) to buy plane tickets and meet him at the airport. Meanwhile, unknown to her, he plans to steal the total amount of the bets, which he figures will be about 2 million dollars, from the money-counting room of the racetrack. However, because he cannot handle the whole gambling system on his own, he decides to share his plot as a gang leader with four partners (S 7): the track bartender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer), the betting window-teller who will give him access to where the money is stored, George Peatty (Elisha Cook), along with Policeman Randy Kennan (Ted De Corsia) who will collect the money-bag thrown by Johnny out of the window and take it to the fourth partner’s place, Marvin Unger’s (Jay C. Flippen). The latter sees himself as Johnny’s close friend and protector and has no scruples to act as the link which spreads the disease of corruption to each of them. The timing of the heist has actually been secured by Johnny’s addition of two diversions which are to take place simultaneously. With cash provided by Marvin, he secretly hires two other men: the first one, Maurice (Kola Kwariani), for a few badly needed dollars, is to start a sham brawl attracting the policemen in front of the entrance when Johnny needs to step inside (S 9). The second one, Nicky (Timothy Carey) (S 10), also for a few dollars, is to shoot down the winning horse of the last race, thus deeply upsetting the gambling procedures.

  • 2 Gilles, Deleuze. Cinema 2, trans.by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta (London: Continuum Books, 1989), (...)
  • 3 Sam Azulys, “Stanley Kubrick: le corps et l’esprit. Volonté de puissance et Métis dans l’œuvre du c (...)

3Having chosen a film which is clearly all about corruption, I will first examine its representation by the workings of Johnny Clay’s unscrupulous mind as he plans the detailed timing and execution of his master-mind heist, never questioning its unlawful character. Secondly, it is the spreading of this corruption which will be studied, as the different plots of perverse betrayals unravel. Thirdly, the film’s cinematography will be discussed, since it either uses the documentary genre to show the mechanisms of corruption in full light, or it uses the film noir genre to show its evil nature. However, because corruption is thus seen from different angles, it appears as a series of errors, which culminate in Johnny’s erroneous belief that he can control the laws of time by his own timing of the course of events. It seems that this heist film can be seen as an early instance of what Deleuze calls Kubrick’s “cinema of the brain”2, which adopts a reflexive “approach […] to highlight the pathological irrationality of a Western world in turmoil”3. Consequently, what will ultimately be examined is how the multiple human endeavours to enjoy happiness by corrupt means are defeated by the active presence of Time as the incorruptible agent.

The representation of corruption in the narrative structure of the film

Johnny’s unscrupulous speculation about human needs

4The narrative shows a group of rather naive characters who are in trouble and agree, for separate and private reasons, to get involved in a heist which is entirely the product of Johnny’s speculation. He capitalizes on their hope that it will provide them with the cash they badly need. Policeman Randy Kennan is seen (S 2) meeting a loan shark in a bar: we understand he has run into debt. Mike O’Reilly needs money to pay for a doctor for his sick wife (S 4). George Peatty is married to a demanding wife called Sherry (Marie Windsor) who dreams of a better life (S 5), and Marvin desperately wishes to please Johnny (S 14). If the film is read as a psychological drama, which is the subject of Lionel White’s source novel Clean Break (1955), then what Johnny’s plan activates in each member of the team’s mind is the shift from repressed dissatisfaction with low wages and lack of prospect of improvement to a sudden opportunity to make their secret plans come true. Their initially quite ordinary problems now turn into a criminal activity. We understand that it is Johnny’s responsibility rather than theirs, as he deliberately perverts their original innocence by their involvement in an unlawful plan, each of them becoming compromised by their implication in its unravelling. The same is true of the two additional protagonists, Nicky (S 10) and Maurice (S9).

Two cases of corruption: gambling and betraying

5A horse-race means that each horse must reach the end of the race in the shortest possible time on an equal distance. It has its own laws: it warrants the equality in departure time between all competitors, and the accurate registration of their time of arrival, in addition to the order in which they reach the arrival line. A perfectly legal game of gambling is under way during each race, players being given total freedom to bet a certain sum on the horse of their choice. Such is the set of rules known to everyone. Yet the very concept of gambling involves secretly eschewing these rules by getting some private information about the horses’ condition and qualities, and then submitting to chance in one’s belief that the losers’ money will reach one’s own wallet.

6Such is the system that Johnny manages to pervert. His plot is to crash the bank of the race-course track where innocent people have legally paid their due. By making a private quite unlawful bet which is to ‘take the money and run’, so to speak, Johnny’s illegal takes on legal gambling is another word for corruption. Moreover, there is a deeper layer of corruption to his gambling. Johnny never actually does any betting with his own money. If he does make a bet, it is on the moment when the bank depository is at its highest, when the race is declared having come to an end. He perverts the proceedings of the race by bringing it to an end arbitrarily with the killing of the winning horse. He has also perverted the system of protection since George the gate keeper has left the door unlocked for him.

  • 4 Janet Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History,” Film Criticis (...)

7On another hand, the betrayals which occur in the film are another common case of corruption, though a far more perverse one. George’s indiscretion to his wife Sherry about his prospects of having more money amounts to a betrayal of Johnny’s plan. Betrayal calls for more corruption as his unfaithful wife Sherry betrays him to her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) (S 6). The climax of this contamination of evil is a secret plot hatched by the lovers whose minds are thoroughly perverted by greed, as if they were under a spell. While the other members of the gang explicitly do not cooperate out of greed but out of need, George’s mind is actually gangrened by Sherry and Val’s disease which has no bounds, as the tragic shoot out caused by Val shows (S 30).These images of corruption are made highly convincing by the generic hybridity of the film’s cinematography4 as will now be seen.

Audio-visual modelling of corruption in the film

Outdoor and indoor scenes

  • 5 Kubrick had practised photography as a student and in 1945 he photographed the tragic face of a new (...)
  • 6 “The documentary challenges how we see the cinematic and the real world, but never produces the tra (...)
  • 7 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 198.

8The long shots of the crowd, edited as counter-shots in parallel with shots of the racing horses, give a sense of authenticity to the race under way, and serve to create an effect of non-committal information. Kubrick’s initial experience as reporter and photographer, and his awareness of the power of visual testimonial are clearly at work here.5 The term ‘documentary’ 6would be appropriate in a discussion of such moments when the camera shoots outdoor scenes. In addition to the scale of outdoor shots, the use of a high-angle to film the race-track allows us to get a global view of the site. The high-angle— or bird’s eye view— also suggests a subjective viewpoint, and thus visualizes a mapping of the human mind. We soon understand that it represents Johnny’s mind working out his plan, a feature which is also found in Kubrick’s later films “as the great circular and luminous table in Doctor Strangelove, the giant computer in 2001, A Space Odyssey…”7. Scale and angle create a space-time coherence which gives the onscreen fiction the effect of objective truth expected in the noncommittal tone of the newsreel as well as the documentary.

  • 8 Ciment, Kubrick, 263.
  • 9 Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, Encyclopédie du Film Noir, trad. M. Hechter (Paris : Rivages, 1987 (...)
  • 10 Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard. “Shadows and Light in the First Film Noir: Stranger On The Third Flo (...)

9Indoor scenes use a different range of scales, from medium shots to close ups. And key-lights are used to suggest the evil nature of corruption underway. Indoor lighting in The Killing actually creates film noir visuals which cause us to emote; it is associated by Michel Ciment to Kubrick’s German cultural origins and the expressionist genre brought to Hollywood cinema by immigrants from central Europe8. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography is noteworthy for its use of chiaroscuro – a type of lighting which is already a feature of Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography for the first film noir, Boris Ingster’s 1940, Stranger on the Third Floor9.10 The sharp contrast of dark shadows and the blinding light under opaque lampshades is used in scenes of oppression and secret plotting, as in the scene where we see Randy being confronted to a blackmailing shark [05:20]. It is also a characteristic of conspiracy scenes such as Sherry’s secret agreement with her lover Val ([15:04-17:44] S 6) or Johnny’s secret meeting with the gang members ([18:16-20:28] S 7). This use of chiaroscuro lighting also gives coherence to the film by the use of spotlights pinning the characters’ tragic flaw, such as Johnny’s over confidence at the roundtable session [19:21], and his talk with Sherry who has been eavesdropping: he believes he can strike a deal with her but the lighting of the two characters casts shadows of doubt on his attempt to manage her (S 7).

  • 11 Ciment, Kubrick, 202. “Il soulignait constamment la façon dont les gens se comportaient. Il me cons (...)
  • 12 See for example Caravaggio, The Cardsharps. Oil on canvas c.1595. The player who is cheating is sit (...)
  • 13 The audience’s entertainment is mostly due to seeing how it all unfolds, and how “the perfect crime (...)
  • 14 John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick — A Biography (London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1997), 74-75.

10Ballard’s expressionist cinematography thus shows us what the characters have in mind, i.e., the corrupt nature of their secret schemes. As Michel Ciment reports in an Interview with James B. Harris, producer of The Killing, Kubrick advised Harris about the direction of actors in cinema by reminding him that people never say what they think, while the camerawork must do just that, i.e., show us what they think.11 This is made clear in particular when Sherry is filmed in close shots of a scene of intimacy with George (S 12). When Sherry is combing her hair in front of her mirror, she tells George he must trust her. Lucien Ballard’s already mentioned lighting of the scene uses a lateral beam of light which comes from the left-hand side of the frame, so that, very much as in Renaissance painting,12 the backlighting of her face in the foreground gives a penumbra which blurs her features and casts doubt upon her words, while the simultaneous lateral lighting of George’s face in the middle ground, staring at her as in a mirror, shows his two profiles – one in full light, one in shadow, and thus makes visually perceptible his inner tension between his love for Sherry and his fear of her. The lighting is used to show us George’s easily manipulated mind as he tells Sherry “It’s today.”13 The use of chiaroscuro in such indoor scenes makes us empathize with the characters, and their dreams of a happy life when their fortune is at last to materialize14.

The opening credits and the tense atmosphere created by music

  • 15 Janet Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred,” 6.
  • 16 Kathryn Kalinak, Film Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010), 86-93.
  • 17 Telotte, Voices in the Dark, 24-25.

11While we are steeped in the world of fiction15 by these visuals, this is also due to the soundtrack which will now be examined. The mise-en-scène of corruption in The Killing is introduced by the atmosphere of anxiety generated by the film’s music16, and, secondly, the use of a voice-over17.

12Gerald Fried’s full orchestra score for the film’s main title serves to arouse tension and a sense of urgency as we see the stables and horses being led away by their jockeys towards the starting-blocks in the distance. Drums are heard giving an acceleration to the tempo as the camera cuts to a medium shot of the horses starting off at full speed. This non-diegetic music piece is used as the ‘race theme’: it is repeated throughout the film, contributing by its punctuation to its steadily increasing emotional impetus. Another source of the tension and urgency that the musical score provides is the use of trumpets and strings in repetitive dissonant chords ominously suggesting chaos [first minutes of the film till 02:11].

Two voices-over: the diegetic loud-speaker’s and the non-diegetic narrator’s

13Each time we hear the loud-speakers’ comments on the progress of the race, their voices contribute to the documentary effect, but these also create a sense of urgency as they are heard repeatedly calling for races to start, and announcing the winners when races are over. Horses and jockeys are ruled by this ubiquitous voice regulating the proceedings: they are told when to get to the starting blocks all at the same time, then the loud-speakers, sometimes framed in a close-shot insert, tell the crowd about the speed of each horse and which horse is about to get to the final line first. To Johnny, the very audible loud-speakers are a clockwork time reference signifying the proper unravelling of his plot. It is also an indication for the gang members who are thus told when they must act, in particular the two extras who are to create diversions when the seventh and last race is announced.

  • 18 Silver and Ward, Encyclopédie, 148-9, 33-4.
  • 19 Mario Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick — A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis (Westport CT: Praeger, 2001), (...)
  • 20 Tim Brayton, “Stanley Kubrick: A Day at the races,” 2014, http://reviews.antagonyecstasy.com/2014/0 (...)

14While such a diegetic voice-over is a characteristic trait of film-noir18, this film script is unique in using a second, non-diegetic voice-over which overlaps the loud-speakers’. It is the voice of an impartial commentator who is heard also speaking in the present tense19. Usually, in film noir, the voice-over is diegetic, since it is associated with a speaker whom we see on the screen at some point and who uses the past tense in the act of reminiscing his/her past life. In Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson’s script, things are quite particular: what the non-diegetic voice-over gives us is a kind of information in the present tense about the progress of corruption in simultaneous time lines which all get together in the end when the team meets, waiting for Johnny (S 30 [1:09:30]), and, in parallel, Johnny’s late arrival at the meeting place (S 32 [1:13:53]). And yet, we find it difficult to associate this present time indication with the implied chronology, when we hear it unaccountably announcing the same event twice, i.e., the moment of the action, the hold-up (at 4 P.M.)20.

15As a result, equally significant are the moments when the narrator’s voice is felt missing. Our attention is then aroused by the sudden lack of time references, and we realize that we are left to our own devices to recreate the chronology, i.e. the order of events in succession. Such moments in which the voice-over leaves us to ourselves deserve a more detailed scrutiny, since we are then faced with the urgency of deciphering corruption. There is no voice-over for sequence 6 which shows us the love scene between Sherry and her lover Val (S 6). Nor do we get the timing by the voice-over narrator for the two following scenes: 7 [18:16 – 23:49] and 8 [23:50—27:00]. Sequence 7 shows the secret meeting of the gang, in which the dialogue plays a crucial role. The dialogue is also important when Sherry is discovered eavesdropping: the gang gets angry with George who clearly told her about the meeting, and Johnny tries to make a deal with her. The silence of the voice-over which we have come to rely on as truth, emphasizes the ambiguities of spoken language. Sequence 8 confirms this dangerous duplicity of the dialogues in an ominous scene screening George at home with Sherry who threatens him: there is no timing, which suggests this situation is a habit with them. The voice-over is also absent when Johnny makes a deal with Nicky the sharp shooter, and when he rents a motel cabin in which he puts a rifle in a flower-box (S 10 and S 11), as if he thought of himself as utterly independent from anything external to his imagined map of space-time. The next time no voice-over is heard is when he performs the robbery (S 29), which heightens the suspense. This silencing of the voice-over also creates suspense when the gang are seen waiting for Johnny (S 30): just as we hear George’s voice stating that Johnny is 15 minutes late, the door is thrust open by the two gangsters. The silencing of the voice-over by now has become a distinctly ominous clue for the audience: the effect is used again as George comes home to shoot his wife (S 34), and for the cruel irony of the outcome (S 35 and end of film).

  • 21 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time — Modernity, Contingency, the Archive, (Cambridge: (...)

16In conclusion to this discussion of the audio-visual modelling of corruption, the generic hybridity of this film contributes to the audience’s excitement, the thrill caused by the documentary stating facts as plain truth and chiaroscuro lighting make it difficult to resist the suspense created by the music score. Moreover, while cinema and music share the time continuum of the screening, the two film genres also both rely on an implicit use of the laws of Time by the cinematography’s own codes of editing, such as simultaneity and succession of events, which embody irreversibility, entropy and contingency21 as will be argued now.

The slow grinding of the mills of God

The film-time continuum and movie-time: simultaneity and succession

17Simultaneity is a mode of representation of the continuum of film-time (The Killing is eighty-five minutes long) which the audience – by the habit of viewing films – believes to lie at the core of the events taking place on-screen. We implicitly believe in an objective chronology of events, and, with crosscutting, re-construct our own representation of a utopic space-time which depends on laws of simultaneity. Such is the case when at 4 A.M. or slightly later, sequences 26 to 29 represent simultaneous actions. Maurice creates a brawl, and Johnny enters the building: the non-diegetic narrating voice-over is heard saying: “time is 4:23 P.M., Nicky shoots Red Lightning and is shot dead. It then says: “time is 4:24 P.M.”, and we then see Randy positioning his car under the window, and we are told: “time is approximately 4:00”.

  • 22 Bill Brown, A Sense of Things—The Object Matter of American Literature, (Chicago and London: The Ch (...)

18A second film-time form which enables us to reconstruct the chronology of events is the law of the succession of events. For example, the handling of the flower-box can be followed in a series of sequences which follow one after the other in continuous editing (S16 to 21). Johnny brings a flower-box to his motel room and picks up a rifle lying in wait to lock it inside; he goes to a bus station and puts it in a locker, collects the key, and puts the key in Mike’s letter box. Mike leaves his sick wife, collects the key from his letter-box, goes to the bus station and collects the flower-box from the locker. He then jumps on a bus to go to the race-track and puts the flower-box in his locker. The succession of events is precisely documented by the circulation of the object from one hand or place to another despite the different places involved and the different characters handling it. Succession becomes a space-time signifier by seemingly imitating the circulation of objects in real life as we experience it, particularly in an urban world in which lockers, buses, keys are cultural icons which go unquestioned.22

19Both the simultaneity of events or their succession contribute to the illusion of reality which is essential to our suspension of disbelief in an action which is rather unbelievable at first hand, as if the mechanism of corruption were easily added unnoticed by ordinary people. As will now be discussed, the film’s script also uses cinematic film noir flashbacks as a means of making the progress of evil forces pervade ordinary deeds.

The jigsaw puzzle: film discourse (flashback) VS film time (linear flow)

  • 23 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Routledge, 1985 1993), 48-53
  • 24 The ‘film time’ of Hollywood films is ruled just like classical drama: the total 85 min. should be (...)
  • 25 Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film — Memory and History (New York: Routledge, 1989), 32-35.
  • 26 David Bordwell, Reinventing Hollywood — How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling (Chicago: t (...)
  • 27 Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick, 6.

20Among the expectations of the cinema-goer, going back and forth along the characters’ timelines, and the upsetting of the narration of film time or fabula23 by the insertion of an earlier episode, paradoxically adds coherence by an address to our memory, since we need to interrupt an action and remember its moment of interruption.24 As Johnny is ready to enter the office rooms once the policemen inside are called outside to join their colleagues (S 26 [54:48]), we are left in the dark by the editing: the camera abruptly cuts to a flashback of Nicky (S 27 [55:54]) leaving his farm earlier that morning. We identify him since we have seen Johnny meeting him (S 10) without any indication about the time, but following his talk with Maurice (S 9). This cutting of the editing to a scene taking place earlier in the morning creates a delay in action and increases suspense: we are left in the dark regarding the main action, suspended in the expectation of an outcome to a crisis which we know is bound to take place in the coming minutes25. This makes our efforts at chronology more exciting due to an added sense of frustration26. The narrator’s voice-over is now heard since we must understand how Nicky’s contribution will make Johnny’s heist possible: “time is 11:40, …12:30, …4:24”. As Falsetto comments: “the narrative action proceeds swiftly and is made more interesting and complex because of the jigsaw puzzle structure”27. Another flashback is also used when an insert shows us Johnny’s bag falling through a window into Randy’s car waiting below (S 30). This insert adds a piece of information helping us with the reconstruction of the chronology of events while the reporter on the radio confesses that he has no clue how the large bag could disappear unnoticed. Besides, Randy (S 30) makes a comment to his fellow gangsters, saying that of course no-one would notice a police car driving away after having stationed for a short while in a nondescript place [1:09:30].

  • 28 Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick, 179-181.
  • 29 Jim Thompson who contributed to the script of The Killing uses the first-person narrative form with (...)
  • 30 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 33-36.

21Our efforts at reconstructing the chronology of events are however confronted with what Falsetto sees as an error in the narrator’s voice-over between sequences 30 to 32. George notes Johnny was supposed to be at the apartment a 7:00 P.M. but when the voice-over says (S 31) Johnny reaches the motel cabin, the time is 6:25. Falsetto notes the time would have been 6:35 P.M., since the voice-over says Johnny reaches the motel cabin ‘40 minutes earlier’ than what George says28. Must we understand this is an instance of a character’s voice being more reliable than the narrator’s, rather than an error in the script? There would be an intended irony in this case, which is certainly in keeping with Telotte’s comment on Jim Thompson.29 In this hypothesis, one cannot but notice that the impersonal narrator’s voice-over is left as if deliberately ignorant of major questions related to our modern understanding of time, and the theory of the relativity of quantified time. As the film draws to its conclusion, the issue of timing and the passing of time is underscored: George and the other gang members are expecting Johnny to join them and ask the question “When?” And because George has his gun ready, the questions “How?” and “Why?” are also relevant to the representation of time as an agent independent from human will and imagination. We are reminded that the physical reality of time is a mental construct, since it can only be inferred from observable events seen as effects of unseen forces, such as irreversibility, contingency, and entropy in physics30.

The upsetting of Johnny’s plan by the laws of Time 

22Johnny’s improvisations replace his initial planning. As Johnny is seen drawing near the meeting place where he intends to give each member his due, he is confronted with the spreading of the disease of corruption which has now caught up with him: something has gone wrong in his plan which perverts its mechanism. He now has to improvise, a new mode of action which is entirely different from his careful initial planning, because his new situation is ruled by chance occurrence, or ‘contingency,’ a law of time which he had been so very sure of having circumscribed. First, he catches sight in the street of George’s bloody face who has escaped from the murderers and he realizes he must not enter the place: he gives up this stage of his plan and moves to the next, going straight to the airport. However, he is unprepared for the obstacle that now stands in front of him, i.e., the volume of the stolen banknotes. He then makes a fatal mistake: instead of keeping them in the bag, he transfers them in an oversized suitcase. As a result, at the airport, he cannot take the money inside the cabin as planned, but must allow it to be transported in the plane’s hold.

23Johnny is now compelled to give up his dream, and face a world in which decision-making lies in the hands of other people and their own thoughts and desires, which means other temporalities, i.e., time-lines. In this world which is out of his control, time’s laws rule his destiny: contingency, as well as irreversibility and entropy, which cause the final colliding of time-lines. As Johnny and his girlfriend watch the truck carrying his suitcase away to their plane, they catch sight of a small dog who, having escaped from its mistress’s arms, races across the tarmac towards another plane. The driver narrowly escapes colliding with it by giving a sharp turn to his driving wheel. The suitcase hovers and finally crashes upon the ground where it bursts open: banknotes start flying all over the place. When Johnny gives himself over to the police, we realize that he has failed imposing his individual time schedule upon time’s universal one. On a metaphorical level of significance, one might say that he had planned to corrupt time itself, a superhuman task which was doomed to failure.

Racing against time

  • 31 The study of the motif of the train in early cinema highlights the relevance of space-time theory i (...)

24As suggested above in the discussion of the jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks, and the voice-over discrepancy, the film displays a reflexivity in its structure which draws our attention to its editing.31 It has been suggested above that the race-track could be understood as a metaphor of Johnny’s mind mapping out his heist plan. In Thompson’s script, we are shown how space-time, mainly in the race-track, and its ironical counterpart, the final airport tarmac, enter in resonance with one another, an achievement which for Bakhtin is characteristic of modern fiction: “spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole […] Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, and becomes artistically visible” (Bakhtin 51).

25It now seems to us as film spectators that all the characters are involved in a competition against the irreversibility of the flow of time which is initially visualized in the horse-race. Sherry manipulates space-time just as she has overheard Johnny doing it. By imitating Johnny, stealing his perfect plan and using Val to collect the profit once it is safely in the gangsters’ room, Sherry competes with Johnny in a private race unknown to him. By the final scene, which is quite different from the source novel’s, the screenwriter adds the small dog racing away to meet a plane and the luggage van also in a great hurry not to miss a plane, which highlights such a reading of the film’s symbolic meaning. The trope of racing against time actually contaminates the characters’ reactions to innocent people standing on their way: Randy is called upon by a woman in distress, but the policeman drives away without answering her call for help (S 24) in order to be on time beneath the window and collect Johnny’s bag. As to Nicky, when he is delayed by the gate keeper who wishes him success by offering a horseshoe at the very moment when the seventh race is announced, he insults him instead of thanking him (S 27). Even more explicit is the competition between the two gangs, Johnny’s and Val’s, which makes the film a story of thieves robbing thieves, until the winner is robbed of his booty by entropy.

Onscreen metaphors of time

  • 32 Kubrick’s fascination with masks is clearly illustrated by the presence of the mask motif in many o (...)

26Moreover, it looks as if the spectator were given visual clues which hint at time’s actual presence on screen. Some inserted close-ups undeniably serve to thicken the figure of time and make it become “artistically visible”, as Bakhtin writes in the quotation above. For example, the gate keeper’s horseshoe is an emblem of luck, i.e., a figure of time, but once Nicky has been shot down by the same gate-keeper, the camera cuts to an insert of the horseshoe lying next to his head. What was meant as a diversion of public attention now has an additional meaning: it becomes a metaphor of the hidden presence of time as contingency, irreversibility, and entropy. As to the robbery scene (S 29), it is not without irony either that we see the clown’s rubber mask which Johnny is wearing. It is a clown’s laughing face, which gathers a metaphorical meaning by the double language of the face laughing at those who are being bamboozled at gun point.32 By the end of the film, it might well be remembered as a metaphor of Johnny’s ultimate failure.

  • 33 Azulys, “Stanley Kubrick,” 37.

27Other examples of such visual clues, which provide a comment on the presence of the three powers of time, i.e., clues about time’s agency, appear to be addressed to the viewer, while the characters are unaware of them. When we first meet Nicky, he is practising shooting with targets which show human features instead of the usual set of circles (S 10 [29:45]), and when we see George’s pockmarked face as a survivor of the general shoot-out (S 30 [1:12:00]), it appears quite similar to the faces on Nicky’s targets. It seems as if both were ominous premonitions of Nicky’s and George’s tragic end, as embodiments of the physical reality of entropy following the heat and agitation of live bodies. Another example of such visual clues is the ground which is littered with losing tickets in the scene introducing us to the betting windows of the cashiers (S 1): it gives the setting an atmosphere of gloom and desolation, as if we were meant to bear in mind from the start that this is a premonitory sign of Johnny’s cash blowing away on the airport tarmac. Besides, one cannot but notice a third ill omen addressing us, i.e., the repeated framing of grids in the background in the screening of couples: Fay and Johnny, George and Sherry, of chess playing by Maurice, and even the office window under which the policeman is stationed. While they are clearly portents of the imprisonment of characters in their dreams, they also suggest the bars of a jail. Still more significant is the grid behind which Fay and Johnny are seen standing as they watch the wobbling suitcase, the camera being oddly placed outside instead of the subjective shot expected, a metaphor of the irreversibility of the dead-end which their adventure has reached33.

28While these metaphors are images of entropy, they can also be understood as connoting the irreversibility of the corruption of the characters’ morals under the pressure of the lure of money. George’s pockmarked face shows the submission of his morals to his wife’s own corrupt soul, the losing tickets littering the ground and the banknotes sent flying also punctuate moments of the time continuum which are figures of the end of an irreversible process of collecting money by gambling, either legally or illegally. So is the horseshoe, a figure of a successful outcome of one’s plans but only as a promise: its ineffectual collapse in the dust can be seen as a figure of the perverted nature of the character’s plan to make money out of the destruction of a race horse. Viewed in this light, it might be suggested that the rubber mask deforms Johnny’ features and betrays the corruption of his imagination and mind, while the numerous grids which appear in various scenes are explicit statements of doom, i.e., the irreversibility of the process of entropy. As to Fay’s innocence, it stands out as the picture of what they might have been.

Conclusion

  • 34 Baxter, Stanley Kubrick, 75.

29The end of this dream of corrupting time is caused by the conflict between the incorruptible nature of physical time in the material world, and time as imagined by the human brain. It is different from the tragic end of the novel, in which George goes to the airport and, mistaking Fay for Sherry, shoots Johnny. Jimmy Harris imagined for his screenplay an unexpected new encounter between the gangster and a dog, thus creating a number of possible reactions among the spectators. To some viewers, this recalls the end of Huston’s 1950 Treasure of the Sierra Madre34, but others feel frustrated and miss the expected Hollywoodian happy end of Johnny and Fay leaving off to some sort of paradise.

30When the members of the gang are killed in cold blood as a result of the power of greed on Val and Sherry’s brains, we cannot but realize they had given up control over their destiny in doing so, and got caught in a whirlwind of superior forces from which there can be no escape. The film’s title, The Killing, now becomes a metaphor of disaster, literal killing taking place, first the horse, then the gamblers who have become gangsters. The final absurdity of the collision of the two time-lines — the dog’s and Johnny’s, via the truck driver’s — confirms the materiality of time, the entropy and contingency of time’s flow combining with time’s arrow, i.e. time’s irrevocable succession in its linearity. Only the editing, cinema’s specific art of shaping its material, space-time, into a meaningful film continuum, could represent these complex layers of meaning. To conclude, it seems that Kubrick’s early film, The Killing, experiments with various facets of time theory by screening a set of corrupting mechanisms in which each living being gets foolishly entangled, its cog-wheel ultimately getting jammed by a tiny sand grain.

  • 35 See for example Gabriella Blasi, The Work of Terrence Malick — Time-Based Ecocinema (Amsterdam: Ams (...)

31Seen from the perspective of eco-cinema, one might also see the victory of the dog’s earnest love for its master over Johnny’s corrupted dreams of happiness involving the shooting of a brave horse doing its best, as an inkling of the new debate about the relationship between culture (here man’s corrupt mind) and nature (here, good horses and good dogs…) in Hollywood cinema, by a filmmaker who was to direct 2001- A Space Odyssey only twelve years later.35

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Bibliography

Azulys, Sam. “Stanley Kubrick: le corps et l’esprit. Volonté de puissance et Métis dans l’œuvre du cinéaste.” Essais : Revue interdisciplinaire d’Humanités, Hors-série, Stanley Kubrick : Nouveaux horizons, edited by Vincent Jaunas and Jean-François Baillon, (2017): 19-39.

Baxter, John. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1997.

Blasi, Gabriella. The Work of Terrence Malick: Time-Based Ecocinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

Bordwell, David. Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge, [1985] 1993.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2, trans.by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta. London: Continuum Books, 1989.

Brayton, Tim. “Stanley Kubrick: A Day at the races” http://reviews.antagonyecstasy.com/2014/03/stanley-kubrick-day-at-races.html, 2014, accessed 08 January 2021.

Ciment, Michel. Kubrick. Paris : Calman-Lévy, 1999.

Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle. “The Train as a Mirror of Cinema: John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924)”. In “Railway and Locomotive Language in Film”, edited by Taïna Tuhkunen, Film Journal, 3 (2016). http://filmjournal.org/fj3-costadebeauregard.

Doane, Mary Ann. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Falsetto, Mario. Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis. Westport CT: Praeger, 2001.

Kalinak, Kathryn. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Maltby, Richard. Hollywood Cinema. London: Blackwell, 2003.

Munday, Rod.  “The Kubrick Cinematic Universe.” Essais : Revue interdisciplinaire d’Humanités, Hors-série, Stanley Kubrick : Nouveaux horizons, edited by Vincent Jaunas and Jean-François Baillon, (2017): 141-156.

Silver, Alain, et Elizabeth Ward. Encyclopédie du Film Noir, trad. M. Hechter. Paris : Rivages, 1987.

Staiger, Janet. “Hybrid of Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History.” Film Criticism 22, no. 1, Special Issue on Genre (Fall 1997): 5-20.

Telotte, J.P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Turim, Maureen. Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History. New York: Routledge, 1989.

White, Lionel. The Snatchers: Clean Break. Eureka CA: Stark House Press, 2017 [1953-1955].

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Appendix

Narrative segmentation - RCB –Source: Mario Falsetto Stanley Kubrick Westport ©: Praeger, 2001, 179-181.

Opening credits (film noir music by Gerald Fried and excitement of horses as the race is about to start) [00 :21-02 :14]

I- introduction of characters Seq. 1 to 4 (voice-over) 5 to 8 (no voice-over) take place on the Saturday before, and seq. 9 (voice-over) 10 to 11 (no voice-over) take place during the week.

Seq.1 Marvin Unger, Mike O’Reilly, George Peatty are introduced at the racetrack, scene of future heist. Time: 3 :45 P.M. Saturday (this if the first Saturday, a week before). Voice-over.

Seq.2 Officer Randy Kennan and loan shark. We understand Randy’s need of money: he is being blackmailed. Time 2 :45 P.M. same day, voice-over

Seq.3 Johnny Clay at home with Fay: we see they plan to leave soon by plane. Time 7 :00 P.M. same day, voice-over

Seq.4 Mike at home with sick wife. Time 6 :30 P.M. same day, voice-over

Seq.5 George at home with wife Sherry. Time 7 :15 P.M. same day, voice-over

Seq.6 Unknown to any of these characters (suspense for audience) Sherry meets her lover Vince Edwards; no precise time given, but later than sequence 5. No voice-over.

II-Preparation of heist (Saturday and the ensuing week days)

Seq.7 The gang meets; discovery of Sherry eavesdropping, George is roughed up. No time is given, but viewers know it takes place after sequence 6. No voice-over.

Seq.8 George at home with Sherry. No time given but it is still Saturday night, after sequence 7. No voice-over.

Seq.9 Johnny talks to Maurice; time is Tuesday of following week. Time 10 :15; voice-over

Seq.10 Johnny talks to Nicky, unknown to the team. Time unclear, but same week assumed. No voice-over.

Seq.11 Johnny rents a motel cabin. Time unclear, but same week assumed. No voice-over.

III- The heist (the following Saturday)

Seq.12 Time 7 :30 A.M. the following Saturday: all the following actions take place on this day, the day of the heist; voice-over. Sherry and George at breakfast; she guesses the time has come but he does not suspect her (suspense). Comment: we move back and forth in the chronology, beginning the day at 7:30 A.M (seq 12) and then moving back to 5 a.m. seq. 13 and forth to 7 a.m. seq. 14

Seq.13 A view of Red Lightning, the horse to be shot by Nicky as a planned diversion at the race-track; he is being fed. Time 5 : 00 A.M. ; voice-over

Seq.14 Johnny talks to Marvin at his apartment. He says that he will be back at 7 P.M. same day.The time is 7 : 00 A.M. ; voice-over

Seq.15 Johnny at the airport: registers suitcases. The time is 7 : 00 A.M. ; voice-over. Comment. RCB. Pb. of the law of simultaneity and time-space coherence between 14 & 15: Johnny cannot be in Marvin’s flat and at the airport at the same time (address to the viewer? unreliable narrator of voice-over? or mistake?)

Seq.16 Johnny at the motel cabin. Time 8 :15 A.M.; voice-over

Seq.17 Johnny at the bus station where he hides the flower-box. Time 8 :45 A.M. ; voice-over

Seq.18 Johnny slips a key in Mike O’Reilly’s mail box. Time 9 :20 A.M. voice-over

Seq.19 & 20 Mike at home with sick wife. Time 11 :15 A.M.; voice-over. Seq.20 Mike takes the key out of his mail box and goes to the bus station; he collects the flower-box (we know it contains a rifle), gets on a bus. Time 11 :29 A.M.; voice-over

Seq.21 Mike arrives at the race-track, where he works as a bartender, and puts the flower-box in his locker. We also see George in the background taking his own gun from his locker (he will use it later when two men enter the meeting room); Time 12 :10 A.M.; voice-over.

Seq.22 Mike at the bar pours beer for a customer; Marvin appears drunk. Time is sometimes after the first race ; voice-over Comment : surprise & suspense (prolepsis): we assume that his singular devotion to Jimmy is upset by the fear of losing him: an ominous portent for us viewers – underscored by the fact it is noticed by both Mike and Johnny.

Seq.23 Randy Kennan makes a call to the police chief to say his car radio is out of order. Time 3 :32 P.M.; voice-over

Seq.24 Randy drives to the track and positions himself under the window. The seventh race (i.e. last race) begins approximately at 4 :00 P.M.; voice-over

Seq.25 Maurice is at a chess club (i.e. flashback). Viewers learn that he is to be in position at the track at 4 P.M.; time is 2 :30 P.M.; voice-over

Seq.26 Maurice picks up a quarrel and draws the attention of the police near the entrance of the bank; start of the seventh race announced. Johnny waiting to get inside Maurice is dragged away at 4 :23 P.M.; voice-over

Seq.27 Nicky leaves his farm at 11 :40 A.M. (flashback) He gets at the track at 12 :30, parks his car, policeman watching, shoots Red Lightning and is shot dead: 4 :24 P.M.; voice-over.

Seq.28 Johnny buys a briefcase and positions himself for the robbery at the start of the seventh race. Time 2 :15 P.M. to 4:00 P.M.; voice-over (we return to situation of sequence 26).

Seq.29 Johnny enters the building (George has opened the door), gets the gun out of the flower-box in Mike’s locker, then dons a different jacket and a clown’s rubber mask. In the racetrack money room, George opens the door for him. After collecting the money, he throws the money bag out of the window. NO voice-over Comment: simultaneity of three events: two diversions and hold-up: achieved as expected Suspense ended

Seq.30 The gang waits for Johnny. They listen to a radio announcer describing the robbery, and puzzled about the bag’s removal. Viewers see the bag come out of the window in a flashback insert. George says the time is 7 :15 P.M., and Johnny 15 mn. Late, expected at 7 :00 P.M. Two hoods (Vince Edwards and accomplice) break in. George uses his gun: the gang and the hoods get killed, George is badly hurt and escapes. NO voice-over

Seq.31 Johnny reaches the motel cabin ‘40 mn. Earlier’ than the previous scene and takes the bag of money out of the cabin. Voice-over: time is 6 : 25 P.M. Comment by Falsetto: discrepancy between voice-over count and character count: it must have been at 6:35. “40 minutes earlier” says George at 7:15 P.M. (7:15 minus 40 min is 6:35) George’s count is wrong? 50 Min earlier?

Seq.32 Johnny reaches the meeting place: Voice-over: time 7 :29 P.M. The police arrive, Johnny sees that something went wrong and drives away.

Seq.33 Johnny buys a large suitcase at a pawn-shop (suspense: we see it is poor quality) and stuffs the money inside. Time :7 :39 P.M. (10 mn. later); voice-over

Seq.34 Sherry at home. George walks in Sherry’s apartment she is packing and calls “Is that you, Val?” George shoots her dead, and dies. Parrot metaphor duplicating the time of the event. Time unspecified but after massacre. Time ellipsis (no voice-over)

Seq.35 Time ellipsis: scene at the airport. Johnny meets Fay at the airport. Told his suitcase is too big for a cabin luggage. We see a lady petting a small dog in her arms (apparently irrelevant, or delay in suspense). Johnny registers suitcase and it is placed on a small loading van. We see the van moving away and the small dog escaping on the tarmac presumably rushing towards an unspecified plane. The dog’s course collides with the van’s own course and its driver swerves to avoid hitting him. Johnny and Fay are watching, as the camera cuts to the suitcase opening and the money flying away. Johnny decides to give himself up. End of film. NO voice-over.

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Notes

1 The Killing (French title: L’Ultime Razzia) 1956; 85 min., black and white, U.S., shot in Hollywood, production company Harris-Kubrick Pictures, distributed by United Artists, film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick, screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson, based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White (The Snatchers: Clean Break. Eureka CA: Stark House Press, 2017 [1953-1955]), music Gerald Fried, cinematography Lucien Ballard, edited by Betty Steinberg. Cast: Sterling Hayden (Johnny Clay), Coleen Gray (Fay), Vince Edwards (Val Cannon), Jay C. Flippen (Marvin Unger), Elisha Cook Jr. (George Peatty), Marie Windsor (Sherry Peatty), Ted de Corsia (Randy Kennan). The Theatrical release poster advertises the film as a gangster film, comparing it with Scarface and Little Caesar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing, accessed 04 June 2016. The digitally restored version of the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in 1999. The sequences of the film are given after the conclusion of this paper: the reader will find the numbering from 1 to 35 of the sequences (S), with the corresponding DVD timing, and the time given by the voice-over which tells us about the progress of the heist.

2 Gilles, Deleuze. Cinema 2, trans.by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta (London: Continuum Books, 1989), 198.

3 Sam Azulys, “Stanley Kubrick: le corps et l’esprit. Volonté de puissance et Métis dans l’œuvre du cinéaste,” Essais : Revue interdisciplinaire d’Humanités, Hors-série, Stanley Kubrick : Nouveaux horizons, ed. Vincent Jaunas and Jean-François Baillon, (2017): 38.

4 Janet Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History,” Film Criticism 22, no. 1, Special Issue on Genre (Fall 1997): 11.

5 Kubrick had practised photography as a student and in 1945 he photographed the tragic face of a newspaper vendor whose paper headlines announced the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He sold the photograph to the magazine Look, which started his career as a famous photographer (Michel Ciment, Kubrick (Paris : Calman-Lévy, 1999), 3). It is also significant, writes Michel Ciment, that his other centre of interest at that time was chess playing – we see Maurice at a chess club (S 25) – and the laws of probability.

6 “The documentary challenges how we see the cinematic and the real world, but never produces the transparency or warrant of truth initially promised.” J.P. Telotte, Voices in the Dark- The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 137.

7 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 198.

8 Ciment, Kubrick, 263.

9 Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, Encyclopédie du Film Noir, trad. M. Hechter (Paris : Rivages, 1987), 358.

10 Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard. “Shadows and Light in the First Film Noir: Stranger On The Third Floor (1940),” Ombres et lumières dans les Amériques, ed. Ruxandra Pavelchievici, Cycnos 38, no. 4 (2023), 131-150.

11 Ciment, Kubrick, 202. “Il soulignait constamment la façon dont les gens se comportaient. Il me conseilla de lire l’Introduction à la Psychanalyse de Freud […] d’éviter le dialogue d’exposition, de voir que les gens ne disent jamais ce qu’ils pensent et qu’il faut faire comprendre au public ce qu’ils pensent vraiment.” Ciment illustrates this passage with a shot from The Killing showing Sherry in the foreground and George in the middle ground staring at her: between them are two glasses signifying they are sharing a drink, but the angle on Sherry underlines her body and in particular her tight-fitting blouse underscoring her breast as a metaphor of her desire which George is unable to satisfy.

12 See for example Caravaggio, The Cardsharps. Oil on canvas c.1595. The player who is cheating is sitting in the foreground, his face in penumbra, and holding two trump cards stacked in his belt in his back which we alone can see.

13 The audience’s entertainment is mostly due to seeing how it all unfolds, and how “the perfect crime is ruined because one dumb dupe couldn’t keep his mouth shut in a feeble attempt to save his toxic marriage.” Tim Brayton, “Stanley Kubrick: A Day at the races,” accessed 8 January 2021, http://reviews.antagonyecstasy.com/2014/03/stanley-kubrick-day-at-races.html.

14 John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick — A Biography (London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1997), 74-75.

15 Janet Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred,” 6.

16 Kathryn Kalinak, Film Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010), 86-93.

17 Telotte, Voices in the Dark, 24-25.

18 Silver and Ward, Encyclopédie, 148-9, 33-4.

19 Mario Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick — A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis (Westport CT: Praeger, 2001), 96-97.

20 Tim Brayton, “Stanley Kubrick: A Day at the races,” 2014, http://reviews.antagonyecstasy.com/2014/03/stanley-kubrick-day-at-races.html.

21 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time — Modernity, Contingency, the Archive, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9-12.

22 Bill Brown, A Sense of Things—The Object Matter of American Literature, (Chicago and London: The Chicago University Press, 2003). The author analyses the culture of objects, collected or circulated in our urban culture by looking at objects in ‘naturalist’ fiction and the rise of industrial civilisation.

23 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Routledge, 1985 1993), 48-53

24 The ‘film time’ of Hollywood films is ruled just like classical drama: the total 85 min. should be divided into three parts: a “movie screenplay should have three acts. Act 1, the set-up, establishes the plot situation […] Act 2, the confrontation, builds it during the next half. Act 3, the resolution, brings the story to its conclusion” (Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (London: Blackwell, 2003), 416). Digressions and subplots are what articulates the ‘confrontation’, and can be introduced by flashbacks or flashforwards, and other narrative devices.

25 Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film — Memory and History (New York: Routledge, 1989), 32-35.

26 David Bordwell, Reinventing Hollywood — How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 2017), 63-84.

27 Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick, 6.

28 Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick, 179-181.

29 Jim Thompson who contributed to the script of The Killing uses the first-person narrative form with “a reporter’s eye for detail”. The paradox of the narrative formula is to reveal “the passions and pathological acts that defy all reason […] call into question their ability ever to sort out or explain their lives”. Thompson “brought to the hard-boiled/crime novel a fascination with exploring various narrative approaches that give his work a distinctly modernist stamp […] In such a character, Thompson seems to be playing at the very margins of narration”. J.P.Telotte, Voices in the dark, 7-8. This is also Falsetto’s comment, Stanley Kubrick, 4.

30 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 33-36.

31 The study of the motif of the train in early cinema highlights the relevance of space-time theory in the understanding of cinema and time. See Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard, “The Train as a Mirror of Cinema: John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924),” in Taïna Tuhkunen ed., “Railway and Locomotive Language in Film”, Film Journal, 3 (2016), http://filmjournal.org/fj3-costadebeauregard.

32 Kubrick’s fascination with masks is clearly illustrated by the presence of the mask motif in many of his films, among which The Killing is one of his first. Rod Munday, “The Kubrick Cinematic Universe,” Stanley Kubrick: Nouveaux horizons, eds. Vincent Jaunas and Jean-François Baillon, Essais : Revue interdisciplinaire d’Humanités hors-série (2017) : 149.

33 Azulys, “Stanley Kubrick,” 37.

34 Baxter, Stanley Kubrick, 75.

35 See for example Gabriella Blasi, The Work of Terrence Malick — Time-Based Ecocinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

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References

Electronic reference

Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard, Corruption and dreams of racing against time: Stanley Kubrick’s heist film The Killing (1956)Film journal [Online], 10 | 2024, Online since 01 December 2024, connection on 11 July 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/filmj/1022; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/130u9

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About the author

Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard

Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard : Emeritus Professor, Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Profile: English and American Studies : Literature, Art and Film. 1993 Founder of the SERCIA (Société d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Cinéma Anglosaxon). Publications: Author:1992: Nicholas Hilliard et l’imaginaire élisabéthain Paris: CNRS. Author: 2000: Silent Elizabethans-The Language of Colour of two Miniaturists, Montpellier: CERRA. Director: 1997: Le Cinéma et ses objets-Objects in Film, Poitiers: La Licorne; Director: 2009: Cinéma et Couleur- Film and Colour, Paris : Michel Houdiard. Author of a number of film studies papers

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