The Killers (1946)

Introduction

The Killers (1946) is more than just an adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway short story—it’s a defining piece of film noir, a poetic, fatalistic puzzle wrapped in hard shadows and even harder choices. Directed with moody brilliance by Robert Siodmak, this film marks the screen debut of Burt Lancaster and features Ava Gardner at her most magnetic and enigmatic.

Though it only directly adapts Hemingway's short story in its opening sequence, it expands that terse narrative into a labyrinthine noir tale about fate, betrayal, and the inescapable consequences of one’s past. The film’s structure—a postmortem investigation of a man’s life through multiple perspectives—bears influence from Citizen Kane and anticipates the flashback-driven storytelling techniques of future crime and mystery cinema.

Plot Summary

The film opens with two cold-eyed hitmen, Max (William Conrad) and Al (Charles McGraw), arriving in a small town to kill a man known as “The Swede.” That man, Ole “Swede” Andreson (Burt Lancaster), is warned in advance, but to everyone’s surprise, he makes no attempt to flee. He calmly awaits death in a dingy boarding house bed.

Why would someone passively accept their own murder?

That central question propels the rest of the film.

Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), an insurance investigator, becomes obsessed with uncovering the mystery behind the Swede’s murder. As Reardon interviews people from Swede’s past—old friends, criminals, and lovers—we slowly learn about a man who was once a promising boxer, fell into the underworld, and was fatally ensnared by Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), a femme fatale tied to a group of gangsters planning a payroll heist.

As the narrative unfolds through flashbacks, we piece together the Swede’s descent: from a disillusioned athlete to a broken man double-crossed by love and loyalty.

Performances

Burt Lancaster as Ole “Swede” Andreson

In his first screen role, Lancaster delivers a performance of astonishing subtlety and brooding physical presence. Swede is a tragic figure—muscular and vulnerable, capable of explosive violence but emotionally fragile. Lancaster, with his expressive eyes and silent intensity, perfectly captures a man who is already dead inside long before the hitmen arrive.

Swede’s passivity in the opening scene becomes more poignant as we learn about his failures, his regrets, and his loss of purpose. Lancaster plays him not as a hardened noir anti-hero but as a bruised romantic who let his guard down for the wrong woman.

Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins

Ava Gardner is electric as Kitty, the quintessential noir femme fatale—seductive, manipulative, mysterious, and untrustworthy. Yet Gardner infuses Kitty with enough ambiguity that we’re never quite sure what she’s thinking. Is she just a pawn in a male-dominated criminal world, or is she the grand manipulator behind it all?

Gardner’s allure is undeniable. Her chemistry with Lancaster is smouldering, and her cold dismissal of him in key scenes is devastating. This role established her as a major star and an icon of noir cinema.

Edmond O’Brien as Jim Reardon

O’Brien plays the dogged insurance investigator with wit and energy, providing the audience with a grounding presence. He’s not a hard-boiled detective but rather a curious everyman drawn into the shadows. Through his methodical work, the story unfolds like a detective novel, with each new revelation casting the past in a darker light.

Direction and Cinematography

Robert Siodmak brings a European expressionist sensibility to the film, which is drenched in high-contrast lighting, skewed shadows, and angular compositions. Working with cinematographer Elwood Bredell, Siodmak transforms mundane American settings—dining booths, hotel rooms, dark streets—into canvases of existential dread.

The opening sequence alone is a masterclass in suspense. The arrival of the killers at the diner, their casual cruelty, and the mounting unease echo Hemingway’s story faithfully. From there, the rest of the film becomes a journey deeper into the Swede’s life, each flashback adding texture and tragedy to the mystery.

The camera often lingers on faces in partial shadow or captures characters boxed in by their surroundings, visually reinforcing the film’s themes of entrapment and fatalism.

Music and Sound

The score by Miklós Rózsa is lush and evocative, adding to the film’s atmosphere of doom. His use of leitmotifs—especially for Kitty—emphasizes the film's romantic fatalism. The theme would later be reused in the 1960s television series Dragnet, giving it an oddly iconic afterlife.

Rózsa’s music alternates between tense, percussive suspense and swooning romanticism, reflecting the central conflict of the Swede’s heart: love and destruction are one and the same.

Themes and Subtext

Fatalism and Doomed Love

From its very first scene, The Killers is a film about inevitability. The Swede accepts his death not because he wants to die, but because he has nothing left to live for. He’s a man broken by love, guilt, and betrayal—his romanticism becoming his ruin. Like many noir protagonists, he’s not corrupted by greed but by emotion.

The Femme Fatale

Kitty is a textbook noir femme fatale, but she’s also a commentary on the role of women in noir—simultaneously idolized and demonized. She’s not just Swede’s downfall; she represents his desire to escape a world of disappointment and mediocrity. That desire turns out to be fatal.

Crime, Morality, and the American Dream

The payroll heist at the heart of the story is less important than what it symbolizes: the temptation of easy money, the futility of trying to escape one’s past, and the moral decay under the surface of post-war America. Swede is the classic noir figure who tries to cut corners and ends up cut down.

Critical Reception and Legacy

The Killers was a commercial and critical success, earning four Academy Award nominations:

Best Director (Robert Siodmak)

Best Film Editing

Best Screenplay (Anthony Veiller)

Best Score (Miklós Rózsa)

Over the years, it has grown in stature, widely considered one of the greatest film noirs of all time. It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2008 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

It also inspired remakes and reinterpretations—notably Don Siegel’s 1964 version starring Lee Marvin, Ronald Reagan, and Angie Dickinson, which took a more violent, stripped-down approach.

Verdict

The Killers (1946) is a spellbinding fusion of suspense, emotion, and noir fatalism. With stunning performances from Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, elegant yet shadow-drenched direction from Siodmak, and a haunting score by Rózsa, it stands as a towering achievement in post-war American cinema.

It’s more than a crime story—it’s a tragedy wrapped in noir, a meditation on love, trust, and the cost of betrayal. As poetic as it is thrilling, The Killers remains essential viewing for anyone interested in the golden age of Hollywood, the origins of noir, or the enduring allure of doomed romance.