‘The Killing’ almost ended Stanley Kubrick’s career before it began: “Have we blown it?”
Stanley Kubrick’s work has often been met with polarising reactions, with the first screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey leading to a strange mixture of awe and confusion as people puzzled over its layered meaning. However, throughout the course of his career, the auteur became accustomed to this particular response, with his films leading to many conversations and debates about the thematic strands that explore masculinity, technology, sexuality and tradition. However, Kubrick began his filmmaking journey through his work with a producer called James B Harris, with the pair making one film that was met with a wave of backlash and thought to be the end of their careers entirely.
Kubrick is most well-known for the later films in his collection, with projects like The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lyndon going down in history for their fraught behind-the-scenes stories and challenging productions, which led to emotionally intense and stirring stories. However, the director began his love affair with the medium with films such as Fear and Desire, The Seafarers and Killers Kiss, eventually leading to his controversial 1956 film The Killing, which Kubrick feared would be the end of his directorial pursuits.
The Killing follows a professional criminal called Johnny Clay, who recruits a number of people to complete one last job before he gets married. But after telling his soon-to-be wife about the plan, she hatches a plot of her own. Starring Sterling Hayden and Coleen Gray, the film displays flashes of his brilliance, creating a razor-sharp heist story with film noir style and complex non-linear narrative, with early nods to the trademark techniques he would later create.
The director worked with his long-time collaborator Harris on the film, who also produced Paths of Glory and Lolita, and is perhaps one of the few people who is most familiar with the mysteries of his creative habits. They formed a partnership that led to the creation of The Killing, with Harris coming across a book called Clean Break and suggesting to Kubrick that they adapt it for the screen, with the director writing a screenplay and then changing the name of the story.
However, despite their enthusiasm over the film, it was not met with the greatest of reactions, with Harris describing the initial screening, saying, “There were walkouts at the preview. People didn’t know what they were going to see, and were confused. Sterling Hayden’s agent told us we’d wrecked the picture. Even friends advised us to make it more conventional. Stanley and I asked ourselves, ‘Have we blown it?’”
This would shake any artist who had just spent months creating something, and in a desperate attempt to rectify the film, they tried to make an alternative cut that would better please mass audiences. Harris described this, explaining, “We rented an editing room and built a linear cut of the picture. Halfway through screening it for ourselves, we looked at each other and said, ‘This stinks. Let’s put it back the way we had it.’ You’ve got to believe in your own instincts. If you listen to hostile voices, even those of friends, you shouldn’t make movies. If you’re going to fail, fail with your own contributions, not somebody else’s”.
While it is unsettling and sometimes feels extremely personal when someone doesn’t like your work, Harris and Kubrick were right to stand by their instincts and assert their vision of the film despite the fact that it didn’t prove to be very popular. Perhaps if Kubrick had diluted his voice at this stage in his career, then it wouldn’t have led to his later masterpieces, reflecting his indistinguishable vision.
