"The Killing" is a "woke" 1956 heist film
Stanley Kubrick's influential classic includes progressive statements about civil rights and gay rights.
President Donald Trump and his followers in the MAGA movement have insisted since the mid-2010s that so-called “wokeness” is taking over pop culture. Translated for those unfamiliar with right-wing nomenclature: this means that movies, TV shows, books, songs and other artistic works include liberal instead of conservative messages.
I emphasize “liberal instead of conservative” because the complaint against wokeness in media pretends to be about getting politics about of culture, but is really about creating a pro-conservative double standard throughout our society. After all, the same people who rail against pop culture references to racism, anti-LGBTQ prejudice, economic inequality and other liberal causes applaud those same properties when they celebrate America, the military, the police, traditional Christianity, “macho” masculinity and other conservative values.
That’s because Hollywood, when it has censored throughout history, overwhelmingly does so to benefit conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, representing the powerful status quo, have always had the edge in depicting their politics as “apolitical” and everyone else’s politics as “political.”
Hence when liberals wish to express their values in media (like conservatives do without question or fear), they often are compelled to be surreptitious. For example, I’ve written about how Hollywood hasn’t made a blockbuster focusing on climate change since “The Day After Tomorrow” in 2004 because of executives’ squeamishness. In 2019 I unpacked how problematic ideologies like nationalism are whitewashed in moves like “1917,” but by contrast it is maddeningly difficult to accurately represent queer science.
This brings us to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” which was released in 1956 — that is, during the height of the Hays Code, a multi-studio agreement from 1930 to 1967 that censored movies to adhere to conservative standards even more rigorously than we see today.
“The Killing” is an adaptation of “Clean Break,” a 1955 crime novel by Lionel White about a complex race track heist that is timed to the second. In translating the book to screen, director and co-writer Kubrick made many changes, such as transplanting the action from New York City to San Francisco and tweaking the sexual habits of protagonist Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden). Most strikingly, Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson added two elements that would be widely considered “woke”
They had one character, Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), gradually emerge as a latent homosexual, pining with an unrequited attraction for Clay. Another character, sharpshooter Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey), has a racially charged interaction with a friendly Black track parking attendant (James Edwards). Characteristically, Kubrick presents Marvin’s homosexuality and Nikki’s racist behavior without overt commentary. The events simply unfold on screen, viewed through Kubrick’s detached yet keenly perceptive eye.
“That’s Kubrick, huh?” Tony Zierra, director of the Kubrick documentaries “Filmworker” and “SK13,” told me in a recent interview. “These are old characters. I think these characters existed since the beginning of time. I think he always introduced the minority characters in his films. He didn’t trust power and I think this was a reflection of the times that he was living during as a Jewish filmmaker, possibly also, and who was living in New York at the time.”
He concluded, “I think it fits with it that just how Kubrick tells stories.”
Elizabeth Yoffe, the producer of “Filmworker” and “SK13,” agreed with Zierra’s analysis.
“I would say that Kubrick, living as a Jewish man in that time period, would’ve been very aware whether or not he himself made this a major part of his life,” Yoffe said. “He was aware of something we’ll keep discussing, which is hierarchies of power. So by bringing in people and adding characters or shifting characters to reflect hierarchies of power and the way people are treated in society, he was doing what he always does. He was reflecting on the human condition.”
“Reflecting on the human condition” really sums it up, far more effectively than the narrow “liberal versus conservative” mindset in which Trump and the MAGA movement seems stuck. Kubrick didn’t include Black and gay characters in “The Killing” because he was a subversive liberal wishing to undermine American morals, as the Trump/MAGA equivalents of the 1950s (most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers) argued about pro-civil rights and pro-LGBTQ content. Kubrick was no radical. He was an artist, one who simply wished to reflect on the human condition, in all its complexity. As a Jewish man capable of empathy, he understood that oppressed groups like Blacks and the LGBTQ community suffer immensely, and that their pain is part of our collective experience.
Therefore, Kubrick included it, even as — sensitive to anti-Semitism among his audiences — he downplayed the explicit Jewishness found in many of the original characters in “Clean Break.”
It is quite complicated to unpack the conservative movement’s obsession with “woke” culture. People hate the Black community, LGBTQ people, Jews, women, immigrants, poor individuals and countless others for myriad reasons. Despite the labyrinthine psychological reasons behind hate, however, the bottom line is clear: We shouldn’t indulge in it.
To be clear, “The Killing” is a great movie for reasons that have nothing to do with this aforementioned social commentary. A tautly-crafted heist thriller released at the tail end of the film noir cycle, “The Killing” stylistically influenced practically every heist movie released ever since. Brilliantly edited by Kubrick in a non-linear timeline, “The Killing” enables viewers to effortlessly follow Clay’s meticulously planned robbery and marvel as he pulls the thing off. When the villains ultimately fail (as the Hays Code required; criminals were not allowed to be seen prevailing), Kubrick attributes their downfall in part to petty foolishness and in part to unavoidable bad luck. It’s a dark, yet accurate, commentary on how the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, offered again without preaching.
Film scholar Robert Kolker notes Kubrick drew from the trendy philosophical ideas of the 1950s, particularly existentialism, “representing in Johnny Clay a man attempting to create an identity through a failed attempt to impress himself violently on the world.” Part of the thrill in watching “The Killing” is appreciating, on each new viewing, just how subtly Kubrick works a pessimistic ideology throughout the picture, interlocking nihilistic attitudes with as much confidence as he interconnects the various complicated pieces of the heist plot.
Even better than the narrative itself, though, is the fact that “The Killing” is chock full of legendary performances from iconic actors, both stars and supporting players. Hayden is a brainy, confident career criminal who audiences root for in spite of themselves; Flippen, Edwards, Coleen Gray, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor and Timothy Carey all flesh out their side characters into the most memorable of dramatic roles; and, as my two personal favorites, “Twilight Zone” actor Ted de Corsia (who most memorably played a laid off factory foreman in “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”) and Kola Kwariani (a Georgian immigrant famous as a champion wrestler and professional chess player) are all vivid in their otherwise-bit parts as crooked men.
This is not a movie which focuses on critiquing society. Thus I perceive the seemingly “woke” elements of “The Killing” as existing due to the same creative instincts that caused Kubrick to change Clay’s ultimate fate and eliminate various side characters while transforming the novel into a motion picture. Kubrick wanted his heist thriller — which, apart from its unique method of chronological presentation, is otherwise standard — to balance being (a) a sleekly-told story, trimmed of fat and yet (b) a layered work of art, with a subtext containing more than might initially appear to exist.
In short, Kubrick wanted to tell a full-blooded story, not just a thin diversion.
As a result, by being “woke,” Kubrick created a superior work of art, one that has influenced crime movies from “Reservoir Dogs” and “Heat” to “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Town.” The “wokeness” didn’t diminish “The Killing.” Quite to the contrary, its “woke” quality is symptomatic of this classic film noir’s overall greatness, and it stemmed directly from Kubrick’s Jewishness. To quote Nathan Abrams’ book “Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual,” “in adapting ‘Clean Break,’ Kubrick’s relation to Jewishness was paradoxical. While he reduced the number of Jewish characters in the source text, he didn’t remove them altogether. [Abrams refers to Cook’s hapless teller and Jay Adler’s loan shark.] Yet he didn’t draw any explicit attention to their Jewishness.”
Yet, as Abrams concludes, “at the same time, he infused a Jewish sensibility beneath the surface of the film.” This is the seeming “wokeness,” the sensitivity to the rights of oppressed groups, that helps along with its many other strengths to elevate “The Killing” above its genre and into the status of bona fide classic.
I wish the Trump/MAGA whiners would pay attention.
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Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.
Excellent analysis and fascinating insights - as always. Really enjoyed the interview with you, Matt