Does anyone if this movie is available without the awful *beep* narration? I was reading in the trivia section that Kubrick was forced by the studio to include it; maybe there's an original cut still floating around somewhere in cinema land.
shareNot only it did not ruined it, the film needed that narration, as this is a film noir, it is just part of that genre
shareThe narration is fine. While I didn't love it, I did feel like it was necessary to a certain extent.
Hey there, Johnny Boy, I hope you fry!
"The Killing" is an influential film on later robbery movies (with the out of sync time line and the clown mask ideas).
Because of that my rating goes from 4.5/10 to 6/10.
Overall this movie is at the level of a cop TV show during this era such as Dragnet or The Highway Patrol.
* Why don't I believe that "The Killing" was one of the greatest crime/noir films of all time?
1. 90 % of the narration was unnecessary. Even for audiences in the late 50s.
- Needed narration would only involve telling the audience the time when scenes were out of sequence.
Otherwise the narration was out of place.
Examples;
Narrator: Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel...
Narrator: An hour earlier that same afternoon, in another part of the city, Patrolman First Class Randy Kennan had some personal business to attend to.
Narrator: After the first race Mike was very busy.
Sherry: I never had anybody but you.
Sherry (cont.); Not a real husband. Not even a man. Just a bad joke without a punchline.
I like the voiceover narration and I don't it's clumsy at all. Firstly, it works well as a tonal element, giving the film a cool noir vibe and adding a sense of urgency. Secondly, even though the film wouldn't be an impenetrable puzzle without it, it does give a better overview, sharpen the focus & provide clarity in a type of movie in which exactitude is crucial and every minute counts. And it's used rather sparingly to begin with, only to introduce scenes - and not every scene at that. In all, I consider The Killing to be rather close to top tier noirs (the main problems - 1) the Elisha Cook/Windsor scenes are overly hammy and Windsor's such an overt, one-dimensional viper that she almost rivals the deliriously evil femme fatale in Decoy, 2) the wrestler-initiated brawl is indeed quite silly and 3) at times Kubrick's working a bit too hard to give certain gang members a humane quality that sort of excuses their involvement in the robbery; laying on too much heart there).
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
The unnecessary narration is the only real problem I have with this otherwise fine film.
I am the Duke of IMDb bio writers! I am A#1!
I know it is not fair, because this was filmed almost 60 years ago, but for me, Art Gilmore, who did the narration, seemed too official, reminding me of Dragnet and John Stephenson...I assumed while watching the movie that they would be caught or killed, and I was just waiting for when the plan would go awry...
For me, the tension, was which mistake would it be fatal and when would it happen.
Still, excellent tension buildup.
and excellent job by the players.
Knowing that Kubric *bleeped* up the information that the narrator supplied, I rather liked it. I wish there was a real timeline vs the narration timeline and a few other things the narrator got wrong compared to what happened in the movie. I only heard one wrong piece of information and I was trying to catch "mistakes".
shareI have read all the posts in this thread and many good points are made.
Some posters like the narration, some do not. I do not, and it drags the film down a notch in my rating.
But the issue I have is with posters who wrote stuff like "this is a film noir, it is just part of that genre" or "it works well as a tonal element, giving the film a cool noir vibe " or "I would add that voice-over narration ... is such a common component in noir movies"
They miss an important point. Narration in "core" Film Noir is given by a main character, and usually by the doomed protagonist. It serves to help us identify with him (it's usually a him) and experience his bewilderment at being "backed up in a dark corner" and not knowing who is hitting him. It is closely related to the experience of the psychiatrist's couch, and psychiatry is integral to film noir.
The narration in "The Killing" is of the type that came into crime movies in the fifties, which often took on a documentary feel. As pointed out by PoppyTransfusion and PsychoDingo above, this serves to emotionally distance us from the protagonists, which is the exact opposite of narration's use in film noir. The narrator is looking down from high and knows everything that has and will happen, not groping around in the dark for leads and getting hit. In other words, a God, or at least an authority figure. We see crime movies that start with a stirring military march and display the insignia of the Feds, the Treasury, the Coastguard, the Fire Service, etc, etc, with the film being "dedicated" to one or other of these stalwart pillars of American society in the Eisenhower era.
Killing is still a Film Noir, and a good one too, but its use of narration and dispassionate fly-on-the wall observation, means that it is moving cinema away from true film noir.
I thought the grim-voiced narrator was good, and added to the grim tone of the movie. However, there was one scene that showed clearly the crowded racetrack bar, and the narrator said something like "The bar got busy, and it was crowded", and I thought "why are you explaining to me what I'm looking at?"
shareIf Kubrick should have killed anything on the soundtrack, it should have been that film score! Wow, that drove me nuts.
share