Of all the people I knew in film school (so many years ago!), I remain in close touch with only one of them: the very smart, funny, and energetically opinionated Jace Gaffney. We connect every week by phone to talk about movies, mostly older ones, and during the intervening days he emails me tidbits of wisdom about a film he's revisited on TCM or discovered somewhere in the recesses of the internet. Like me, he's a great aficionado of film noir, and he recently shared some thoughts about that suspenseful scene from Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) in which Edmond O'Brien's insurance investigator Jim Reardon is led into a deadly trap involving the movie's titular assassins. Jace kindly gave me permission to post his comments on this blog and add some screen captures. Here's the link. Enjoy!
