THE KILLERS Guest Artistic Director

Never have so few pages, six, inspired so much good cinema . The short story “The Killers,” written by Ernest Hemingway, gave rise to two thriller masterpieces, the first directed by the eclectic Robert Siodmak, and the second by Don Siegel, another craftsman who transcended the limits of being a simple studio director at the service of the studios. Six pages, two cinematic gems, large doses of fatality, two great film openings, horrifying and different, linked only by the brutality of the two killers who behave like hired executioners. If I had to choose the 10 films with the best opening sequences, these two versions of THE KILLERS would be in a privileged position Burt Lancaster is Ole “Swede” Andreson, a former boxer who is lying on the bed in a dark room in a boarding house. A ca-worker comes to warn him that two men have been asking about him in a bar and they’re undoubtedly coming to kill him. Ole doesn’t make a single movement; he murmurs that he’s tired of running. “I did something wrong once in the past,” he says. And he carries on waiting, lying on the bed . Shortly after, the door opens and the killers’ shots flash in the darkness of the room . Fatality is the only element that connects my most recent film with THE KILLERS and is the reason I’ve chosen it. Fatality is a genre in itself; it impregnates equally such different genres as drama, science fiction, the thriller, certain spy films and, of course, film noir The characters are usually unaware of fatality; that’s why the behavior of Burt Lancaster’s character is so moving and also so intriguing . He could escape, run away to Mexico, but he’s tired, he knows that one day some killers he doesn’t know will come and kill him. It’s like he’s waiting for them. The film got four Oscar nominations, Ava Gardner showed that she was indeed the most beautiful animal in the world, and Burt Lancaster revealed himself as a great tragic actor Beautiful, tough and tragic, like Anthony Veiller’s script.