Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Out of the Past: Episode 10# The Killers

Episode 10: The Killers
Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir
Hosts: Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards



While Robert Siodmak's noir triumph "Ernest Hemingway's 'The Killers'" flaunts its literary bloodlines, Hemingway's 1927 short story is little more than a pretext. The film actually investigates the fundamental post-WWII question: in a world where every man bears scars from the fight, how and why does he keep fighting? Siodmak's answer seems to be the very one given by Albert Camus in his famous essay "The Myth of Sisyphus." At the moment a man accepts the burden of his existence, bends to shoulder the stone of his being, he is greater than his destiny. Siodmak adds a caveat: if a man knowingly wrongs another he seals his own doom, and the killers descend on him like Fate itself.

To Listen to the Conversation

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