The Killing is many things. It’s a 1956 film noir heist film. It’s the earliest work that Stanley Kubrick embraced as representative of what he wanted to do. But The Thing You Need to Know About The Killing is: it’s a daringly non-linear jigsaw puzzle of a story that jumps back and forth through its own timeline, looping through the same events as it shifts perspective among its many characters. Such innovative narrative gymnastics remain striking even today, and give the film a weird modernity for a B&W picture set in an era before airport security. Quentin Tarantino has identified The Killing as (part of) the inspiration behind his own exploration of non-linear storytelling in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
But, for all that, there’s a risk here of taking this too far. The more we praise the supposedly non-chronological storytelling in The Killing the more we risk misunderstanding how movie storytelling works in the first place, and crediting this film for innovations that it doesn’t really innovate. I don’t mean to be churlish here, it’s just that the events in The Killing did not actually take place—they’re made up. So there is no “other” chronology involved. The only order in which these events “happen” is the order in which Kubrick tells them to us.
A few words on the art of editing. It is the most fundamentally cinematic aspects of cinema. Pretty much every other aspect of filmmaking has an analogue in some other artistic discipline: writing, directing, acting, designing sets, composing soundtrack music, photography… Editing calls for the intentional juxtaposition and elision of differing angles of view, which is unique to the motion picture experience.
And it dates back to the beginning of the movies. The earliest film experiments presented single, self-contained scenes. Here’s a group of folks playing cards. Done with that? Ok, here’s a baby eating.
But then things started to get interesting. Georges Melies discovered the power of selectively omitting details from the audience’s view. The early film verities of Edison and Lumiere document actual occurrences; Melies made films that documented things that not only didn’t happen, they couldn’t happen. Extend Melies’ trickery a bit and you get animation—and that leads to the likes of Bugs Bunny and King Kong, inanimate objects who had all the charisma and magnetism of living human stars.
The essence of the trick is the absolute determination on the part of the viewer to stitch these fragments together into a cohesive whole. Putting together Life of an American Fireman, Edwin Porter spliced together different shots of completely different fire engines, confident in the belief that his audience would be too wrapped up in the thrill of the chase to notice or care that the fire engine changed its body design along with the number and breed of horses pulling it every time the camera shifted position.
Come DW Griffith, and of course he could persuade audiences to accept that two different scenes were co-incident simply because he cut between them—that’s what we’re prone to do. We’re hard-wired to watch movies.
I can wrap up the history lesson to jump to the conclusion: there is no link between the order in which things are shown to the audience and the order in which they were filmed. This is true of every movie ever made. Even the most conventional and tame of movies routinely film scenes out of order for the logistical convenience of access to actors and locations, and will record multiple takes of each shot to hone the performances. In fact, would be the rare experimental oddity that attempted anything but.
During post-production, the editor will do more than choose the best takes and arrange them in order—that sounds like little more than assembling a puzzle. Editors are creators themselves, shaping meaning out of clips. They may delete perfectly fine sequence for any number of reasons, and move other bits around.
And here’s where I’m going with all this: I said this process of editing was unique to movies, but I was wrong. To a certain degree. To the extent that what we’re talking about here is the process of choosing what to show you and in what order, to achieve a certain effect, this is a process that has already been engaged in by the writer.
I don’t mean to be churlish here, it’s just that the events in The Killing did not actually take place—they’re made up. So there is no “other” chronology involved. The only order in which these events “happen” is the order in which Kubrick tells them to us. The film can’t unfold “out of order” because any other sequence of events would be violating the intentions of Kubrick and his team.
But what I’m distinguishing here is non-chronological from non-linear. Because from the perspective of the fictional characters within the story, there is an alleged sequence of cause-and-effect that exists from their perspective. To help us keep sight of that, the film employs a narrator who constantly reminds use when various events are supposed to have occurred. He’s got a stern voice and an obsessive attention to detail, but for some reason he’s unable to tell the story in an A-then-B sequence.
Unable or unwilling.
Remember The Killing was written, directed, and edited with the expectation that these events would unfold to us in precisely this order. That certain events appear to occur numerous times, with detours into the past sandwiched in-between, is neither a mistake nor, properly speaking, an experiment. The structure is built this way for a reason.
To take just one example: the incident of the corrupt cop, the squad car, and the open window. On the day of the heist, Ted de Corsia’s character drives to the racetrack. He’s got the trip timed to the second (the narrator reminds us of this fact), and is so focused on keeping to his timetable that he risks exposure by driving away from a crime-scene, leaving a concerned citizen calling after him. This seems to pose a risk to the plan—what’s to stop her from reporting him?
Next we see him park at the track, next to an office building, and stare up at a window.
Later, after some other events both before and after, Sterling Holden stuffs $2 million in cash into a duffel bag and heaves it out an open window, walking calmly away. Astute viewers make the connection—oh, that’s where his partner his waiting—but in case anyone doesn’t figure it out on their own, the movie gets around to confirming those suppositions. De Corsia’s role is the bag man, to catch the bag and drive off with it, knowing that no one is likely to suspect a policeman. And any concerns we might have felt over his risk of exposure are moot—his alibi was convincing his superiors he was drunk. Being reported for dereliction of duty would only corroborate his alibi, not implicate him.
These scenes could have been shown in any order. That’s a physical fact—you can cut them up and splice them together with glue anyway you like. The question is, which order and why? And any other order, other than the one Kubrick used would tend to make the story make more sense to first-time viewers. The order Kubrick chose, however, has the singular effect of heightening the viewer’s sense of confusion and anxiety.
Discomfort comes from not knowing what is happening or why. If De Corsia explains his role in the plot first, then we understand why he drives off when he does, and why he parks where he does. Conversely, if we see Sterling Holden chuck the money out the window first, and then cut outside to see him catch it, then we don’t even need the explanation scene. But instead, we get these bits disconnected and reorganized in the best possible way to keep us disoriented and maximize the tension. Why’d he do that? How’s he gonna get away with that huge bag of money? What’s going on now?
I don’t mean to be churlish here, it’s just that the events in The Killing did not actually take place—they’re made up. So there is no “other” chronology involved. The only order in which these events “happen” is the order in which Kubrick tells them to us.
