The Killing - 1956

The Killing, 1956 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Timothy Carey
Director: Stanley Kubrick

A stylish film noir crime drama, and the definitive heist-caper movie - Kubrick's third film and first successful one, although highly under-rated when released. The tale is about a desperate gang of anti-hero misfits and lowlifes (in an ensemble cast) led by a grim, determined, and recently-released-from-jail con Johnny Clay (Hayden). The group devises and executes a complex, carefully-timed racetrack heist of $2 million - that goes terribly wrong, similar to Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (also with Hayden). The plan is to cause simultaneous, diversionary confusion by shooting one of the racehorses in mid-race and instigating a bar fight, thereby allowing Johnny to rob the main track offices and seize the day's takings.

The gang includes racetrack teller George Peatty (Cook), a pathetic wimp and loser who is easily tricked by his devious, scheming femme fatale wife Sherry (Windsor) into revealing the details of the heist to pass to her adulterous lover Val Cannon (Edwards, the future doctor Ben Casey on a TV series), who plans to take the loot at the rendezvous point once the robbery has been accomplished. The entire movie is presented non-chronologically in a winding fashion (with flashforwards and flashbacks), and played out in a series of tense, black-comedy scenes with swift transitions. The doom-laden, voice-over dialogue was derived from Lionel White's novel Clean Break.

The film has influenced many heist films, including the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) (also remade in 2001). With excellent cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but ignored completely by the Academy, although this work would influence filmmakers for decades after - most notably Guy Ritchie and crime drama auteur Quentin Tarantino and his film Reservoir Dogs.

Key Largo - 1948

Key Largo, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Lauren Bacall, 1948 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor
Director: John Huston

An intelligent, exciting, theatrical, but moody, downbeat crime drama/thriller (and melodramatic film noir) about a bullying, fugitive gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson), who is on-the-run with fellow mobsters and his alcoholic lush moll and ex-nightclub singer, Gaye Dawn (Trevor). In a Florida Keys hotel in the off-season during a violent, tropical hurricane, the snarling Rocco waits for counterfeit money, prepares to flee to Cuba, and holds the various residents hostage: Frank McCloud (Bogart), a disillusioned, returning war-scarred veteran who is visiting the newly-widowed Nora Temple (Bacall) and her wheelchair-bound father-in-law and hotel manager James Temple (Barrymore) - the father of his friend that died under his WWII command in Italy. Adapted from Maxwell Anderson's stage play by director Huston and Richard Brooks, the plot resembles Bogart's earlier film The Petrified Forest (1936).

Bogart and Bacall would never star together again on the big screen, after having previously worked together in the classic films To Have and Have Not (1942) (which Key Largo resembled in its dark tone), The Big Sleep (1946), Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), and Dark Passage (1947). Huston also directed Bogart in, among other films, The Maltese Falcon (1942), The African Queen (1951) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

In the Heat of the Night - 1967

In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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An intense whodunit detective story thriller set in the little town of Sparta, Mississippi during a hot summer, with an innovative score by Quincy Jones and title song sung by Ray Charles. Norman Jewison masterfully directed this murder melodrama from a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant that was based on John Ball's novel. The film's posters proclaimed: "They got a murder on their hands. They don't know what to do with it."

The liberal-minded film, realistically-filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler (who had just filmed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and would later go on to Coming Home (1978)), was a milestone for the racially-divided mid-60s because it forced the odd-couple collaboration of a bigoted but shrewd, redneck Southern sheriff named Bill Gillespie (Steiger) and a lone, intelligently-clever black homicide expert from Philadelphia named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).

The film, with a non-white actor in a lead acting role, was so controversial that it couldn't be filmed in the Deep South, so the sets were recreated in various small towns in two states: Sparta, Freeburg, and Belleville, Illinois, and Dyersburg, Tennessee. Following the success of this film, Sidney Poitier reprised his Virgil Tibbs character in two other films: he investigated the murder of a prostitute in the sequel They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), and battled against a drug smuggling ring in The Organization (1971).

The Killers - 1946

The Killers, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, 1946 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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A classic, definitive film noir, from a short story by Ernest Hemingway, told in eleven taut flashbacks after a bravura opening murder sequence. Two hit men Al (McGraw) and Max (Conrad) enter a greasy-spoon diner in Brentwood New Jersey, asking the manager about Ole 'Swede' Andersen (Lancaster, in his film debut) - a gas station attendant. The doomed 'Swede' (an ex-boxer), who has been hiding in town under an alias for six years, is warned in a nearby boardinghouse. Indifferent, he expects their arrival and calmly, passively awaits their deadly approach. Insurance investigator Jim Reardon (O'Brien) pieces together and unravels the plot and reconstructs the life of the victim through interviews and detective work. He discovers a complex tale of crime and treacherous betrayal - all revolving around a beautifully-glamorous, mysterious, double-crossing femme fatale Kitty Collins (Gardner) - who sings "The More I Know of Love."

The French Connection - 1971

The French Connection Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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An action-packed, intense, gritty crime thriller filmed on location and based on a true story, starring two hard-nosed, vulgar New York City police cops who expose an international, heroin-smuggling operation based in Marseilles - headed by suave, elusive, mastermind crime boss Alain Charnier (Rey). Passionate, tough, pushy, and unorthodox narcotics detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Hackman) recklessly and obsessively fights crime with partner Buddy Russo (Scheider). With the breath-taking, famous elevated-railway scene of Doyle fearlessly chasing a runaway train - with Charnier's henchman Pierre Nicoli (Bozzufi) in a borrowed car while narrowly dodging traffic and bystanders.