The Killers

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky

1956

****

Film students, Andrei Tarkovsky fans, cinephiles and film lovers in general are all so lucky that The Killers, Andrei Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Gordon’s first student film, has survived and is available to watch all these years later. Tarkovsky and Gordon were students in Russia’s State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) together and worked together on their first assignment. Students were required to work on films in groups of two or threes due to a lack of equipment at the film school. Tarkovsky and Gordon asked Marika Beiku to work with them. The Killers is an adaptation of a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The story is divided into three scenes. The first and third scenes were directed by Beiku and Tarkovsky, the second by Gordon. The first scene shows Nick Adams (Yuli Fait) observing two gangsters (Valentin Vinogradov and Boris Novikov) in black coats and black hats entering a small-town diner where Adams is eating. They tell the owner, George (Aleksandr Gordon), that they are searching for the boxer Ole Andreson and that they want to kill him. They tie up Nick Adams and the cook, and wait for Ole Andreson to appear. Three customers enter the restaurant and are sent away by George. One of the customers is played by Tarkovsky, who whistles Lullaby of Birdland. The second scene shows Nick Adams visiting Ole Andreson (Vasiliy Shukshin) in his hide-out, a small room. He warns Andreson about the two gangsters, but Andreson is resigned to his fate and unwilling to flee. The third scene shows Adams returning to the diner and informing the owner of Andreson's decision. Apart from the fact that the gangsters are all very young, the film is slick and authentic looking with some beautiful compositions. The idea for adapting Ernest Hemingway's short story was Tarkovsky's. All roles were played by students of the VGIK, and the camera and lighting was handled by fellow students Alfredo Álvarez and Aleksandr Rybin. Beiku, Gordon and Tarkovsky set up an American bar in the studio of the film school, at this time a symbol of depravity and becoming a minor attraction among students. Props were brought by students from their homes, and from relatives and friends. The film was praised by Mikhail Romm, the professor and teacher of the three students and even now, with bigger budgets and advances technology, it’s pretty hard to beat for a student film. While it’s nothing like what you’d expect from a later Tarkovsky film, it is fascinating to see how competent and creative he was so early on in his career. Certain themes can be seen here that would be seen throughout Tarkovsky’s body of work, including the unmistakable emphasis on the simplicity of suspense, of human action in desperate circumstances and his dependence on figures in curiously exciting compositions. It’s a remarkable black and white noir that is just as good as Robert Siodmak’s 1946 freature-length adaptation. Ernest Hemingway would never have seen the film, and I’d love to have seen his expression upon knowing that a work of his had been adapted into Russian, but even he would have admitted that Tarkovsky’s version felt authentic. I do wonder whether Tarkovsky, Gordon and Beiku rocked a few boats by adapting Hemingway, seeing as the author’s work had only just been allowed by the government to be published in 1956. Various tricks used in the short still seem beyond the reach of many contemporary directors. Part of the skill, and curiosity, in how tense the long first scene at the diner is that music is completely absent, with the only tone coming from Tarkovsky himself as a whistling customer. Meanwhile, Tarkovsky uses Hemingway's dialogue in a very realistic manner. While the film ends on a screeching halt, the sense of ambiguity as to the fate of the characters is worthwhile for the material, as it's perfectly anti-climactic. It’s a student film that shows off the technical skills of the students but it also captures Hemingway’s idea and builds on it with the student’s own take on the situation. It’s unlike anything else Tarkovsky made but you can still see comparisons to his later work. I also see so many contemporary films within the short, I do wonder just how much of an influence The Killers has been on many of the big-time directors we know today?