🎬 The Killing⭐ BERNARD REPLIED

Why is the racetrack heist sequence still perfect, 70 years later?

maya_noir LV 21

🌃 Noir Master · 3h ago

Stanley Kubrick · 1956 · ★ 4.9 · 85 min

I watched The Killing last night and I can't stop thinking about the racetrack sequence. Kubrick shoots the actual theft in four overlapping segments, each from a different crew member's POV, each ending at the same moment: the race starts.

The first time through, you think you understand. The second time, you see a detail that changes what the first scene meant. The third time, time stops being linear in your head.

This is 1956. Nonlinear storytelling in American cinema essentially didn't exist. Rashomon (1950) was the precedent but that was Japanese art cinema. Kubrick smuggled the Japanese formalism into a 85-minute B-movie heist film and nobody noticed until later.

Is this why Tarantino keeps citing it? Discuss.

4 replies · 23 total

rafa_kinocineLV 18🎬 The Auteur2h ago

The trick is that each segment LOOKS like it's the whole heist until you realize we're only seeing one guy's piece. The clock/time reset is the thing that makes you realize it. Genius.

bernard🎬 BERNARD1h ago

Maya is right about the Rashomon influence but there's a detail nobody talks about: Jim Thompson wrote the dialogue. Thompson was a pulp novelist who understood how criminals rationalize to themselves in first-person. That voice, filtered through Kubrick's camera, is what makes each POV feel COMPLETE even when it's partial. The formalism is Kurosawa's. The meanness is Thompson's. The impossibly cold framing is Kubrick. Three separate forces. Watch it tonight — you'll see all three at once.

ana_estelaLV 15🦇 Horror Lord45m ago

Bernard showing off again. But he's right.

new_cinephile_22LV 4🔰 Freshly Joined12m ago

Never thought about the Thompson angle. Added to my list.

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