The Killing (film)
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| - | '''Poetic justice''' is a [[Literary technique|literary device]] in which [[virtue]] is ultimately [[Bounty (reward)|rewarded]] or [[vice]] [[punishment|punished]], often in modern literature by an [[irony|ironic]] [[Plot twist |twist of fate]] intimately related to the character's own conduct. | + | '''''The Killing''''' is a 1956 [[film noir]] directed by [[Stanley Kubrick]] and produced by [[James B. Harris]]. It was written by Kubrick and [[Jim Thompson (writer)|Jim Thompson]] and based on the novel ''Clean Break'' by [[Lionel White]]. The drama stars [[Sterling Hayden]], [[Coleen Gray]], [[Vince Edwards]] and features [[Marie Windsor]], [[Elisha Cook Jr.]], [[Jay C. Flippen]] and [[Timothy Carey]]. |
| + | ==Plot== | ||
| + | Johnny Clay ([[Sterling Hayden]]) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay ([[Coleen Gray]]). He plans to steal $2 million from the money-counting room of a racetrack during a featured race. He assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop ([[Ted de Corsia]]), a betting window teller ([[Elisha Cook Jr.]]) to gain access to the backroom, a sharpshooter ([[Timothy Carey]]) to shoot the favorite horse during the race to distract the crowd, a wrestler ([[Kola Kwariani]]) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and a track bartender ([[Joe Sawyer]]). | ||
| - | == Origin of the term == | + | George Peatty, the teller, tells his wife Sherry ([[Marie Windsor]]) about the impending robbery. Sherry is bitter at George for not delivering on the promises of wealth he once made her, so George hopes telling her about the robbery will placate and impress her. Sherry does not believe him at first but, after learning that the robbery is real, enlists her lover Val Cannon ([[Vince Edwards]]) to steal the money from George and his associates. |
| - | English drama critic [[Thomas Rymer]] coined the phrase in ''The Tragedies of the Last Age Considere'd'' (1678) to describe how a work should inspire proper [[morality|moral]] behaviour in its audience by illustrating the triumph of good over evil. The demand for poetic justice is consistent in Classical authorities and shows up in [[Horace]], [[Plutarch]], and [[Quintillian]], so Rymer's phrasing is a reflection of a commonplace. [[Philip Sidney]], in ''Defense of Poetry,'' argued that poetic justice was, in fact, the reason that fiction should be allowed in a civilized nation. | + | The heist is successful, although the sharpshooter is shot and killed by a security guard. The conspirators gather at the apartment where they are to meet Johnny and divide the money. Before Johnny arrives, Val appears and holds them up. A shootout ensues and a badly wounded George emerges as the only man standing. He goes home and shoots Sherry before collapsing. |
| - | == History of the notion == | + | Johnny, on his way to the apartment, sees George staggering in the street and knows that something is wrong. He buys the biggest suitcase he can find to put the money in (and struggles to lock it properly). At the airport Johnny and Fay aren't allowed to take the suitcase along as hand luggage because of its size, and instead must check it in as regular luggage. Johnny reluctantly complies. While waiting to board their plane they watch as the suitcase falls off a cart onto the runway, breaks open and the loose banknotes are swept away by the backdraft from the plane's propellers. |
| - | Notably, poetic justice does not merely require that vice be punished and virtue rewarded, but also that logic triumph. If, for example, a character is dominated by greed for most of a romance or drama, he cannot become generous. The action of a play, poem, or fiction must obey the rules of logic as well as morality, and when the [[Theories of humor|humour theory]] was dominant poetic justice was part of the justification for humor plays. During the late 17th century, critics pursuing a [[Neo-Classicism|neo-classical]] standard would criticize [[William Shakespeare]] in favor of [[Ben Jonson]] precisely on the grounds that Shakespeare's characters change during the course of the play. (See [[Shakespeare's reputation]] for more on the Shakespeare/Jonson dichotomy.) When [[Restoration comedy]], in particular, flouted poetic justice by rewarding libertines and punishing dull-witted moralists, there was a backlash in favor of drama, in particular, of more strict moral correspondence. | + | Fay and Johnny leave the airport but are unable to hail a cab before officers are alerted to them. Fay urges Johnny to flee but he refuses, calmly accepting the futility of trying to escape, and utters the final line, "What's the difference?". The film ends with two officers approaching to arrest him. |
| - | == Examples == | + | ==Cast== |
| - | *"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard." ([[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], ''[[Hamlet]]'' (III.iv.207).) | + | * [[Sterling Hayden]] as Johnny Clay |
| - | *The story of [[Esther]] includes two instances of poetic justice, both involving Haman. Ultimately, Haman is executed on the gallows that he had prepared for Esther's cousin Mordecai. | + | * [[Coleen Gray]] as Fay |
| - | *[[Dante]]'s ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' reads like a compendium of examples of poetic justice. | + | * [[Vince Edwards]] as Val Cannon |
| - | *Almost every episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)|The Twilight Zone]]'' features poetic justice, usually due to an ironic twist. | + | * [[Jay C. Flippen]] as Marvin Unger |
| - | *An interesting and unusual example of poetic justice is found in [[Tapan Kumar Pradhan|Dr Pradhan's]] [[Sahitya Akademi]] award-winning poem [[Equation (poem)|Equation]] where the economic-sexual exploiters of poor tribals in [[Kalahandi]], ([[Orissa]]) get paid back in their own coin when they get afflicted with various maladies and sexually transmitted diseases. | + | * [[Elisha Cook Jr.]] as George Peatty |
| - | *The [[self-fulfilling prophecy]] can be considered an early example of poetic justice. One example of this is the ancient [[Sanskrit literature|Sanskrit story]] of [[Krishna]], where King [[Kamsa]] is told in a prophecy that a child of his sister [[Devaki]] would kill him. In order to prevent it, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband [[Vasudeva]], allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of them one by one, but the eighth child, Krishna, is saved and raised by a cowherd couple, [[Nanda (mythology)|Nanda]] and [[Yasoda]]. After growing up and returning to his kingdom, Krishna eventually kills Kamsa. In other words, Kamsa's cruelty in order to prevent his death is what led to him being killed. | + | * [[Marie Windsor]] as Sherry Peatty |
| + | * [[Ted de Corsia]] as Policeman Randy Kennan | ||
| + | * [[Joe Sawyer]] as Mike O'Reilly | ||
| + | * [[James Edwards (actor)|James Edwards]] as track parking attendant | ||
| + | * [[Timothy Carey]] as Nikki Arane | ||
| + | * [[Joe Turkel]] as Tiny | ||
| + | * [[Jay Adler]] as Leo the Loanshark | ||
| + | * [[Kola Kwariani]] as Maurice Oboukhoff | ||
| + | * [[Dorothy Adams]] as Mrs. Ruthie O'Reilly | ||
| - | == Examples in television and film == | + | ==See also== |
| + | *[[List of American films of 1956]] | ||
| - | *Poetic justice is referred to in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode "[[Boy Scoutz N the Hood]]." When Bart returns home from a Junior Campers meeting Homer asks "How was jerk practice, boy? Did they teach you how to sing to trees and build crappy furniture out of useless wooden logs?" The chair that Homer is sitting on then breaks and he declares "D'oh! Stupid poetic justice." | ||
| - | *In the film ''[[Batman Returns]]'', [[The Penguin]] informs his traitorous cohort Max Shreck, that he will be killed in a pool of the toxic byproducts from his "clean" textile plant. The Penguin goes on to wonder if this is tragic irony or poetic justice. | ||
| - | *In the film ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]'', Indy's love interest Dr. [[Elsa Schneider]] is a [[Nazi]] agent. After this revelation, she tries fooling Indy and others saying, "I believe in the grail, not the swastika." Yet, she continues working with the Nazis and [[Walter Donovan]]. She tricks Donovan into drinking from the false grail and he dies a horrible death. In the end, poetic justice comes in the form of her death. She tries stealing the grail and triggers an earthquake. Indy grabs her hand before she falls into a bottomless pit. Yet, her greed overcomes her and she reaches for the grail again, causing Indy to lose his grip on her. Indy's father, [[Henry Jones Sr.]], sums her death up, saying, "Elsa never really believed in the grail. She thought she found a prize." | ||
| - | *[[The Walt Disney Company|Disney films]], most specifically animated films, often use poetic justice as an ending device (examples include ''[[The Lion King]]'', ''[[Aladdin (1992 Disney film)|Aladdin]]'', and ''[[The Great Mouse Detective]]'', among many others), with the hero being rewarded, and the villain being punished in ironic and, occasionally, fatal ways. | ||
| - | *In the film, ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007 film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'', as well as in the short story and the musical, the titular character, [[Sweeney Todd]], kills his customers with a razor blade. In a twist of the story, at the end, having assassinated the Judge and the Beadle, Todd is killed by Toby, a boy he kept with Mrs. Lovett, with his own razor blade, while Mrs. Lovett, who bakes the dead customers into meat pies, is thrown into her own oven to bake to death by Todd. | ||
| - | *In the film ''[[Back to the Future 2]]'', when Marty McFly is on the roof top of Biff's Casino & Hotel, Biff issues a nod to poetic justice before admitting to killing Marty's father, George Mcfly, with the same gun he intends to kill Marty with. | ||
| - | *Some [[heist film|caper films]] end with poetic justice, when a criminal gang's takings of a well planned [[Robbery|heist]] are lost in a manner that is usually not quite their own fault, in complete opposition to the perfect execution of the crime itself. A striking example are the last minutes of ''Mélodie en sous-sol'' or the original versions of ''[[Ocean's Eleven (1960 film)|Ocean's Eleven]]'' and ''[[The Italian Job]]''. | ||
| - | * In the television series [[Avatar: The Last Airbender]], several characters find poetic justice. This is most noticeable in the episode The Southern Raiders, in which a character who killed two main characters' mother lives with his own mother in retirement, who is angry and constantly berating and talking down to him. | ||
| - | *In the film ''[[Cruel Intentions]]'', Kathryn, who has been holding up an image of purity, innocence, and popularity while actually being manipulative, deceitful, and two-faced, is exposed at the end of the film due to the diary of her stepbrother Sebastian, who had just recently died. | ||
| - | *In the film ''[[The Killing (film)|The Killing]]'', after a very carefully planned, and at first successful robbery, a series of unexpected side events (an unfaithful and greedy wife, a too weak suitcase...) ends up with most of the gang killed, the money scattered by the wind at the airport, causing the mastermind to be arrested just when he was about to flee the country. | ||
| - | *In the TV series [[The X-Files]] episode "Darkness Falls," Mulder theorizes that a group of missing loggers are victims of attacks by extinct insects released from dormancy when the loggers cut down a 700 year-old tree. An environmental activist named Doug Spinney, who previously exposed the cut-down tree as one deliberately marked to be protected, then remarks, "That would be rather poetic justice, don't you think? Unleashing the very thing that would end up killing them?" | ||
| - | |||
| - | == See also == | ||
| - | |||
| - | * [[Conflict between good and evil]] | ||
| - | * [[Equation (poem)|Equation]] | ||
| - | * [[Petard]] (to be hoisted by one's own) | ||
| - | * [[Karma]] | ||
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Revision as of 19:46, 27 November 2017
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The Killing is a 1956 film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick and produced by James B. Harris. It was written by Kubrick and Jim Thompson and based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. The drama stars Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards and features Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen and Timothy Carey.
Plot
Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay (Coleen Gray). He plans to steal $2 million from the money-counting room of a racetrack during a featured race. He assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop (Ted de Corsia), a betting window teller (Elisha Cook Jr.) to gain access to the backroom, a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) to shoot the favorite horse during the race to distract the crowd, a wrestler (Kola Kwariani) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and a track bartender (Joe Sawyer).
George Peatty, the teller, tells his wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) about the impending robbery. Sherry is bitter at George for not delivering on the promises of wealth he once made her, so George hopes telling her about the robbery will placate and impress her. Sherry does not believe him at first but, after learning that the robbery is real, enlists her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) to steal the money from George and his associates.
The heist is successful, although the sharpshooter is shot and killed by a security guard. The conspirators gather at the apartment where they are to meet Johnny and divide the money. Before Johnny arrives, Val appears and holds them up. A shootout ensues and a badly wounded George emerges as the only man standing. He goes home and shoots Sherry before collapsing.
Johnny, on his way to the apartment, sees George staggering in the street and knows that something is wrong. He buys the biggest suitcase he can find to put the money in (and struggles to lock it properly). At the airport Johnny and Fay aren't allowed to take the suitcase along as hand luggage because of its size, and instead must check it in as regular luggage. Johnny reluctantly complies. While waiting to board their plane they watch as the suitcase falls off a cart onto the runway, breaks open and the loose banknotes are swept away by the backdraft from the plane's propellers.
Fay and Johnny leave the airport but are unable to hail a cab before officers are alerted to them. Fay urges Johnny to flee but he refuses, calmly accepting the futility of trying to escape, and utters the final line, "What's the difference?". The film ends with two officers approaching to arrest him.
Cast
- Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay
- Coleen Gray as Fay
- Vince Edwards as Val Cannon
- Jay C. Flippen as Marvin Unger
- Elisha Cook Jr. as George Peatty
- Marie Windsor as Sherry Peatty
- Ted de Corsia as Policeman Randy Kennan
- Joe Sawyer as Mike O'Reilly
- James Edwards as track parking attendant
- Timothy Carey as Nikki Arane
- Joe Turkel as Tiny
- Jay Adler as Leo the Loanshark
- Kola Kwariani as Maurice Oboukhoff
- Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Ruthie O'Reilly
See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Killing (film)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
