The Killing

Stanely Kubrick - 1956
Very early Kubrick; and very, very good Kubrick.
Clear influence of Welles, I would call it. Big deep spaces, often low angles. Overlapping dialogue, a 'Lady From Shanghai' level of speed between scenes, flying from one to another, cutting off. Also I detected a lot of Ophuls in the camera movements, and Hawks maybe also (also the pace with Hawks; 'Scarface', maybe?) in the horizontal tracks through rooms, through walls, starting scenes often (as in that great shot in 'La Signora Di Tutti'. From these openings, pretty long takes (as throughout), we often move to a quite deliberate SRS, a slightly weird one.
What Kubrick has added to these directors is certainly a great deal of precision; and this film is in many ways about precision. The famous narrative shattering is those pieces of a puzzle, helped of course by the quite funny narration. The film is partly about, and this could be a helpful key to Kubrick's work, the idea of the parts and the whole. If you add all the pieces of the puzzle (here), the actions of a romantic hero psychology (Lyndon), the psychological attributes of a human (2001), the causes of a society (Clockwork Orange... is this a bit desperate?), what do you get? Not the whole seemingly, because precision is... unreal? Impossible? How tightly can you plan?
Also, manipulation of time is key here. We have the return to one sequence, the horse race. The moves back, putting into place. It isn't actually too nuts, some suspense needs to be created, but there is some nice bits of seeing one seen from two angles, narrative wise. Also, it is remarkable in the final shooting scene how quickly it passes; he clearly extends time in some places, but here just flies through.
I loved the droleness here, partly in the very exact compositions, in the slight absurdities (nothing important in the bag!). Their is a weirdness here, again 'Lady From Shanghai' esque, unreal I suppose. It flies along, great fun. Some great individual scenes; I love all of them with the car park attendant.