The Killing (1956) and a brief history of the Production Code Administration

I’d like to open this up by mentioning that, of Stanley Kubrick’s thirteen full-length movies, we will be watching nine of them in this little project of ours.  Of these, The Killing is the second-lowest at #195, and I honestly think that some of that rating might just be the film showing its age.

I should go ahead and mention upfront that the rest of this will contain ending spoilers simply due to the nature of the discussion. Since the ending can be considered something of a surprise by today’s standards, you may want to consider not reading this if you’re unfamiliar with how the Production Code Administration ran things in Hollywood.

Under threat of government censorship of the film industry, the Production Code Administration was formed in 1934 to enforce rules set forth by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1927 so that Hollywood could maintain control over their own films. Among other things, the PCA wanted to ensure that people wouldn’t attempt to recreate crimes and other dangerous activities the occurred in films, so most films of the era ensure that anyone who broke the law was appropriately punished. In that regard, the ending of The Killing (everyone except Johnny and his girl are dead, and Johnny is about to submit to his arrest with a line something to the effect of “what’s the point in running away?”) was far from surprising if you were aware of the era it was filmed in. Due to the fact that the bad guys had to lose, however, directors who worked under the Production Code were able to have their characters commit much more heinous acts than would generally be accepted today. The Killing has the main characters rob a legitimate business, Brute Force (Jules Dassen, 1947) had a group of hardened criminals start a riot and kill several innocent guards in an attempted escape from jail, and the original Scarface (directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson in 1932) had the main character Tony kill literally dozens of people, mostly in cold blood. In today’s movies, criminal main characters must either be completely reprehensible and still be served a nice, big helping of karmic justice, or only harm “worse guys” if they are to be accepted by audiences, unlike the very humanized criminals found in a number of movies in the Production Code Administration era. In that respect, the characters in The Killing are interesting to watch simply because of how different they are from characters in modern movies.

As Ben mentioned, the music in The Killing was its major drawback. It was most likely acceptable in its time (I wouldn’t know either way), but it was far more jarring that any other music from the era that I can recall. It was a little disappointing that I found myself chuckling during some rather tense parts in the movie just because of how out-of-place the music felt.

One thing I appreciate about good black and white films is the cinematography. Because of the lack of color, cinematographers had to be especially careful about what they put where in frame. While this is epitomized by Citizen Kane (which is coming up rather soon), The Killing is no slouch in this regard. It was immediately apparent that every motion was meticulously planned so that every frame would be balanced for precisely the effect intended. Beyond the typical good cinematography, however, only one scene really stood out in my mind as being particularly clever in its use of cinematography, so The Killing didn’t get a perfect 10 in that area, but it was still an exceptional example of cinematography.

Overall, I would recommend The Killing to just about anyone, with the caveat that the viewer should be relatively focused when the movie begins. Today’s movies often give ten or so minutes of “fluff” to draw the audience into the story, but this is not the case with older films. Going into the movie with this in mind, you should have no problems enjoying the film.

–Marc

Thanks to James Kendrick, whose class on film violence taught me about the PCA, and whose book, Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre I referred to while writing this review.