James Harris & Jim Thompson
Hollywood CA 1956
By most accounts his third feature should be taken as Kubrick’s graduation piece. It marks his ascension into the realm of professional film makers, which is the sort of thing that probably means more to young ones than to their elders in the field. (Even Jack Smith, when he started out, had hoped to attain this distinction.) Though it owes more than a little to John Huston’s great film noir, the Asphalt Jungle, even beyond its premise and star, the difference between these two heist movies is more telling. The Killing is the work of a man obsessed with the possibility and impossibility of control. As a great planner, he recognized the importance of contingency. He wouldn’t have had the career he wanted otherwise and would have ended up like Johnny Clay staring into the whirlwind as it all got blown away.
In many ways Kubrick's new partnership with James B Harris could be termed his first successful marriage. Harris's influence on and contribution to his three films with Kubrick should not be underestimated and (while not to suggest that their union was physically consummated) it was then that Kubrick first began presenting openly Queer characters in his films.
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