The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their second piece, they will discuss Stanley Kubrick’s film The Killing (1956). Drew’s Take Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is not my favorite work by the visionary director. In …
Having finished Lolita, a subversive Hollywood piece even by noirish standards, Kubrick returned to war. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’s scope was more encompassing than the private torture of Paths of Glory, looking forward to the threat of apocalyptic destruction instead of a reflective portrait of immediate world wars. Instead of matching and multiplying the grave tone inherent in both his previous work and the source material, Red Alert by Peter George, Kubrick opted for a brand of blacker-than-pitch humor claiming “The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy or, better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible…”. This does not deter from the omnipresent horror surrounding both the film and the historical environment that determined its existence. Beneath the antics and the (wonderfully) strained acting of Sellers and Scott lies the taut strains of nuclear holocaust with only these chummy actors in control. It’s dread at its purest, comfortably resting amongst the instantly quotable dialogue and perfectly composed images: an atmosphere of unspeakable horror-that-is-to-come.
An often amusing and enlightening result of a film buff’s tendency to explore movies of the past is discovering how differently people behaved and understood the world and the shifting circumstances around them. After all, common sense and zeitgeists are known to change with the times.
With the Academy Awards for the 2011 film year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to take a look at one of the event’s most consistently fascinating categories: Best Supporting Actor. The most interesting story in the category this year isn’t who got nominated, it’s who didn’t. More specifically, Albert Brooks was completely robbed of …
The Killing Directed by Stanley Kubrick Written by Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson U.S.A., 1956 Stanley Kubrick, now there is a name evocative of so many immediate thoughts and emotions for movie buffs everywhere. Infuriating, coldly mechanical in his depiction of people, difficult to comprehend. He was also an intelligent screenwriter, deeply profound in the …
Rudie Obias of the AuteurCast was nice enough to invite me on to participate in a review of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. I highly recommend our readers to take a listen. Here is the info. In 1956, Stanley Kubrick joined with longtime producing partner, James B. Harris to make a film noir for the ages. …
Crime Wave Directed and Andre de Toth Screenplay by Crane Wilbur U.S.A., 1954 Sometimes the merits of a film noir come down to how superbly directed and acted it is, simple as that. Truth be told, there are only so many variations of the same story which can be told within the genre for it …