'The Killers': Gunfight at the Green Cat Restaurant

Awaiting His Fate: Burt Lancaster as the doomed Swede in Robert Siodmak's "The Killers."

NOTE: The usual spoiler warnings apply.

My friend Jace Gaffney's analysis of a pivotal scene from Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) makes up the bulk of this post. But before turning things over to Jace, I should offer a brief plot synopsis to put the scene in context. Based on a well-known short story by Ernest Hemingway, the movie recounts the murder of a none-too-bright ex-boxer called the Swede (Burt Lancaster) and the complicated circumstances that led to his demise. The movie's prologue is a fairly faithful rendering of the Hemingway story: Two hitmen (Charles McGraw and William Conrad) arrive in a small town looking for the Swede and, after terrorizing the occupants of a local diner, find him at a nearby boarding house, where they shoot him to death. The rest of the movie—not derived from Hemingway—traces the efforts of an insurance investigator named Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien) to piece together the Swede's backstory. He talks to various people who knew the Swede, including, most notably, police detective Sam Lebinsky (Sam Levene), who had grown up with him. Through the interviewees' recollections, dramatized in flashbacks arranged in nonlinear fashion, we learn that the Swede, his boxing career finished due to injury, fell in with a band of criminals planning a payroll heist at a hat factory. The heist went off according to plan, but Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), the duplicitous girlfriend of the gang leader, Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), convinced the Swede—who was hopelessly smitten with her—that he was being cheated out of his share of the loot. The Swede and Kitty absconded with the cash, but then she double-crossed him and disappeared with the money. Fearing reprisals, the Swede went into hiding, working as a gas station attendant in the small town depicted in the prologue. Big Jim happened to pass through one day and recognized him. It was he who hired the hitmen. 

The last people Reardon locates in his quest are Colfax and Kitty, who are now married and living handsomely, thanks in large part to the cash from the payroll heist. Reardon's meeting with Kitty turns out to be a setup; the same killers who did in the Swede come for him. He and Lt. Lebinsky foil the murder attempt and go to Big Jim's mansion, where a shootout between the gang leader and another hoodlum he had betrayed leaves the latter dead and the former dying. Kitty pleads with Big Jim to absolve her of any involvement in the whole messy affair, but he expires without doing so. She is placed under arrest.

It is the explosive meeting with Kitty that Jace chose to write about, and though it precedes the final shootout at Big Jim's mansion, it is, in Jace's view, the real climax, the real "beating heart," of the movie. What he has to say is quite illuminating.—Gene Adair

P.S. Please be aware that the following is not a complete, shot-by-shot analysis. The conversations between Kitty and Reardon, for example, utilize the familiar shot/reverse-shot patterns common to such exchanges, but these aren't treated in detail. Similarly, the flashback within the scene—a mini-drama in itself—is mentioned only in passing.—G.A.

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The climactic scene—visually, thematically, and formally—occurs with about fifteen minutes left in the movie and is approximately nine and a half minutes long. It begins at the point where Jim Reardon meets Kitty Collins outside the Adelphi Theatre (figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1: Reardon paces the sidewalk outside the Adelphi waiting for Kitty. Note the man with the cane (Ernie Adams) by the entrance.

Fig. 2: Kitty arrives. A moment later, we see them catch a cab.

They leave in a cab, but the camera lags behind to focus on a man with a cane who's been lingering beside the entrance to the Adelphi. A shady-looking character, he gets in a cab to follow Reardon and Kitty (fig. 3). As the second cab exits the frame at screen left, the titular killers themselves are revealed on the sidewalk, the first time they have been seen since the film's prologue (fig. 4). They turn and walk toward the camera to hail their own cab. Thus, the threads of the picture are being symphonically gathered up.

Fig. 3: The man with the cane gets into a second cab to follow Reardon and Kitty.

Fig. 4: The titular killers are back, their first appearance since the film's prologue.

Siodmak then cuts to a conversation in the cab between Reardon and Kitty; Reardon reveals that the Green Cat restaurant is their destination (fig. 5). The cab drops them off there (fig. 6), and just as it pulls away, a second cab stops at the curb, presumably carrying the man with the cane. This mysterious figure is apparently an intermediary between the head gangster, Big Jim Colfax, and the two hired guns; his job is to lead the assassins to wherever Kitty and Reardon are headed.

Fig. 5: Kitty and Reardon on their way to the Green Cat restaurant. 

Fig. 6: The cab deposits Kitty and Reardon at the Green Cat. A second cab will pull up to the curb a moment later.

Inside the restaurant, the two principals are reflected in a large mirror as they enter the main floor via a small flight of stairs; the man with the cane limps in behind them (fig. 7). Kitty and Reardon then break into the frame as their "actual," non-reflected selves and seat themselves next to the mirror (fig. 8). This use of a reflective surface is exceedingly clever and striking in its economy: first, the image in the mirror gives the viewer a clear sense of the spatial coordinates defining the arena; and second, it marks the exact place in the restaurant where Kitty and Reardon have located themselves. 

Fig. 7: A large mirror inside the restaurant shows Kitty and Reardon heading for a table; the man with the cane enters behind them. 

Fig. 8: Reardon and Kitty enter the frame, partially blocking out the mirror for an instant as they seat themselves next to it.

In a reverse shot, Kitty and Reardon start to converse; the man with the cane stands at center-frame about twenty feet from their table (fig. 8). He is apparently scoping out the room so that he can relay information to the killers. He heads back up the stairs, leaving the place the way he came in. He's not seen again.

Fig. 9: In a reverse shot, the man with the cane stands in the center of the frame, scoping out the area. He will then head toward the stairs at screen right and leave the establishment.

At this crucial meeting place, we have arrived at the film's beating heart, the story in microcosm. Not present at the Green Cat, of course, is the deceased Swede, but he is included in the final flashback sequence related by Kitty (fig. 10). After she tells Reardon what occurred between her and the Swede regarding the stolen money, we return to the restaurant and hear a piano revving up on the soundtrack.

Fig. 10: The Swede and Kitty in the film's final flashback.

What we have seen thus far lends a unique quality to the violent tenor of this landmark movie. This overture is at least the equal to the seismic event still to come.

Kitty leaves the table to "powder her nose." The panning camera follows her as she walks to the ladies' room (fig. 11); it continues on to the main entrance, where the killers come in and make their way to the bar (figs. 12 and 13). From one killer's point of view we see Reardon alone at his table (fig. 14).

Fig. 11: The camera panning with her, Kitty leaves the table and approaches the ladies' room doorway.

Fig. 12: The killers make their entrance and head for the bar.

Fig. 13: One of the killers (background) looks for Reardon.

Fig. 14: Reardon from the killer's POV, alone and seemingly vulnerable.

Next comes a key bridging shot of a waiter carrying a tray to the end of the bar (fig. 15). The camera reverse-tracks with him, past the two hitmen. As the waiter retrieves a glass, the man standing at the end of the bar turns out to be the movie's top cop, Lt. Sam Lebinsky. He turns his head in Reardon's direction (fig. 16).

Fig. 15: A waiter appears carrying a tray. The camera reverse-tracks with him as he makes his way toward the end of the bar.

Fig. 16: Lt. Lebinsky is revealed at the bar. He turns his head toward Reardon.

While the camera pans with him, Lebinsky turns away from Reardon and toward the killers, his right hand slipping inside his jacket for his police revolver (fig. 17). His dramatic movements provide the kinetic push that sets up the violent action that follows. 

Fig. 17: Lebinsky, at far left, turns toward the killers, his hand inside his jacket.

In a shot from behind Reardon directed toward the bar, the killers make their move (fig. 18). Reardon upends the table and ducks behind it as the two men begin to fire. But Rearden has his own gun; shooting through the table, he nails one of the assassins (fig. 19). Cut to Lebinsky firing his revolver (fig. 20). The other killer is hit (fig. 21).  

Fig. 18: The killers turn toward Reardon, who has his back to us in the foreground.

Fig. 19: Rearden upends the table and gets off a shot of his own. 

Fig. 20: Lebinsky fires.

Fig. 21: Another man down.

Amid screams and general pandemonium, Beardon breaks through the ladies' room door (fig. 22). Inside he discovers that Kitty has escaped through a window (fig. 23). End of scene. 

Fig. 22: Reardon breaks into the ladies' room.

Fig. 23: An open window signals Kitty's escape.

I cannot think of another passage in a movie—any movie—before The Killers that is this symphonically constructed. Nor has there been one until the set pieces in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) that matches it.