Murder By Contract (1958)

[Steve-O]

I recently cracked open a copy of The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love. The book, which is excellent, has several brief but informative movie reviews. It with a series of articles about film noir and neo-noir including the classics Out of the Past, Gun Crazy, and Pickup on South Street. One film that stuck out amongst them is the ultra-cheap Murder By Contract. The 1958 B-film rarely gets mentioned alongside other films from that time period (noir from the same time --Touch of Evil and 1959's Odds Against Tomorrow-- are much more highly regarded today). Former Boston Globe film reviewer Jay Carr writes that film inspired Martin Scorsese. You can certainly see a bit of this film in Taxi Driver – the workout scene and the killer's methodical planning seem to be lifted from Murder. After doing some research for this article I see that the director was indeed influenced by this forgotten little film, a movie he calls a “guilty pleasure.”

Scorsese saw Murder By Contract when he was a teenager and it stuck with him. In 1993 the director commented to the New York Times, "It's an example of an American B movie that is 100 times better than the film it played with on a double bill," the director recalled... "The film it was playing with when I saw it was 'The Journey,' by Anatole Litvak, with Yul Brynner. That film had nice color, but when 'Murder by Contract' came on the screen, it was surprising and lean and purposeful, and not like anything my friends and I had seen. Afterward we talked about it on the street for days. When I saw it again years later, I was overwhelmed by the severity of the style, which was dictated by the budget. I even tried to put a clip of it in 'Mean Streets' but had to take it out because it was too long."

Murder by Contract is a story about a grim professional assassin. Film noir has seen it's share of cool, calculating killers that keep their sangfroid during hits. However, Vince Edwards (The Killing) resembles future neo-noir killers Lee Marvin in The Killers (1964) or Alian Delon in Le Samouri (1967) much more than the typical film noir hitmen like Alan Ladd's in This Gun For Hire (1942). However, it could be argued that all genre film hitmen are based on Ladd's Raven.

Film noir was at the end of it's classic era during 1958. Many noir released from then on seemed to be more like art films disguised as crime movies. Compare Murder by Contract with Touch of Evil from the same year. Both films are brilliant, they look like they're years apart - worlds apart even. While Touch of Evil -with it's big budget and star-filled cast- was essentially a traditional crime movie, Murder by Contract seemed to be a first step towards lean neo-noir and crime films of the 60s.

The film features a small cast and a simple plot. Claude is a clean-cut, educated young man with one goal in life: he wants to buy a house he picked out along the Ohio River. He finds that the quickest way to get the money for the house is to become a hitman at 500-dollars a kill. The film begins with Claude interviewing for a job as a killer (parodying a corporate job interview). After a quick discussion, the interviewer tells him to go home and he'll call him. He may call in an hour, a day or maybe weeks. Claude goes back to his rented room and waits for the call back. He doesn't leave the room for days. He orders takeout, does pullups and reads waiting for the call that eventually comes. Claude is hired. He begins his career as a killer by taking out various local men for the mob. Never using a gun, Claude takes out each hit assigned to him with legal weapons – ropes, knives, and even killing a man with a straight razor while posing as a barber. Claude's reputation as an efficient killer grows. He is even tasked to kill the man that hired him in the first place which appears to elevate his status in the mob.

The tone of the movie changes when Claude is sent “3000 miles” to Los Angeles for a hit. He's hired to kill a night club performer that's set to testify against the mob's Mr. Big. The East-coaster is out of his element in the strangely empty streets of the City of Angels. Before he can complete his “contract” he wants to make sure that the job isn't a set up. He meets his handlers at the airport. For days, Claude hits golf balls, drives around in a convertible, swims in the ocean and goes to movies until he's sure that the two hoods working with him (played by Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine) aren't being followed by the law. George and Marc at first have a hard time getting used to his methodical way of working. Eventually, Claude decides to do the hit. To his surprise the target is a woman. Claude panics and asks for more money. The men think that he has a problem killing a woman but actually Claude doesn't like the fairer sex as targets because they're unpredictable.

“It’s not a matter of sex, it’s a matter of money. If I’d-a known it was a woman, I’d've asked double. I don’t like women. They don’t stand still. When they move, it’s hard to figure out why or wherefore. They’re not dependable. It’s tough to kill somebody who’s not dependable.”

He's proven right when his first clever attempt to kill his target fails when she uses a remote control on her ready-to-explode TV instead of touching it. Feeling jinxed, Claude comes up with another scheme. This time he uses a sniper rifle (Claude has stated several times he doesn't use guns) to hit his target after George (Bernardi) shoots off some flaming arrows as a distraction.

With the killing done -and confirmed by the local papers- Claude celebrates by hiring a local LA call girl to have dinner with him. His distaste for women is shown even more transparent now. Claude is taken by surprise by the moonlighting hooker when she tells him that the woman he was supposed to kill is alive. Not knowing that Claude is the killer, the girl tells him about how the police are keeping the woman's survival under raps at the DA's office until she can testify. Claude, no longer in a mood to celebrate, hustles the confused girl out of his room.

Claude now is convinced that the job is jinxed. He kills his handlers and then goes back to the woman hidden in the Hollywood Hills in an attempt to finish the job.

The film climaxes when Claude has a surprising crisis of conscience -- he can't finish off the killing when he finally has the chance. The police track him down easily and he's killed. The ending is very much open to interpretation. Spoilers: Why couldn't he do the killing? Was it because of the music she's playing? Is it because he's finally gotten a conscience? This is another example of Murder By Contract straying from traditional crime film formulas of the 50s. You'll find most thrillers end with all the loose ends tied up and the hero going off to marry his girl. This ending is more like a modern Von Trier or Lynch film where it's best not to puzzle over the details but marvel the film's impact. Murder By Contract really is an art film disguised as a genre movie.

Directed by Irving Lerner and lensed by cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Murder By Contract doesn't appear to even look like a film noir. Most of the Los Angeles scenes are shot during the bright daylight. Only the finale when Claude crawls through drain pipes to get to the Hollywood Hills house does the film show any shadowy night shots. Los Angeles looks almost completely empty– no one on the streets or at the beach -- giving the film a somewhat eerie feeling. Lerner's use of barren areas (including an empty movie set) makes the viewer feel like they're visiting an alien land with Claude. The simple repetitive soundtrack (by Perry Botkin) features a single guitar plucking that is reminiscent of The Third Man's zither adds to that mood. Scorsese apparently had Howard Shore mimic the guitar soundtrack for his thriller The Departed.

Besides the unconventional use of location shooting in Los Angeles, strong performances by the small cast make up for the lack of production values. Edwards is very good as Claude – a killer that gets more upset after finding lipstick on his coffee cup than with the killing he's doing. Edwards became a household name for a time playing Ben Casey on TV but he was also in several decent film noir including Rogue Cop, The Killing, and City of Fear (a bizarre film too. It's considered a follow up to Murder). TV actors usually suffer being remembered only for their TV personalities - causing their earlier film roles to lose some of their bite looking back at them (Lucy in The Dark Corner, for example). Edwards fame has pretty much faded which is only a plus when looking at a movie like Murder By Contract.

Bernardi is probably best known as Lt. Jacoby on TV's Peter Gunn. He's excellent as George - a guy who's both fascinated and terrified of Claude at the same time. Katie Brown is effective as the confused party girl who doesn't know what to make of Claude.

If not for Scorsese's interest in the quickly-made film (it was shot in just seven days in the late 1950s) and an occasional airing of the movie on TCM this inventive and offbeat film would be forgotten today. And that would be a crime.

[Steve-O]

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/431/murderbycontractf8caae6kz8.jpg
Murder by Contract

[David]

Great job, buddy. This one stayed with me for awhile, as I loved how kinda offbeat it was. Memorable characters, music, and writing.

Thanks!

[Steve-O]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnc-aN5nRRQ

Thanks Dave... this is a great one...

here's the trailer

[MartinTeller]

(review from January 27, 2010)

A spectacular B-movie noir about a hitman with a difficult assignment. Vince Edwards is glorious as the cold, calculating, philosophical killer. Watching him coolly go about his work with detachment and precision is gripping. Director Irving Lerner tells the story with economy and flair, constructing a number of memorable sequences. The "waiting for the call" montage is a clear influence on Taxi Driver... indeed, Martin Scorsese is a big fan of the film. One of the most striking elements is the score: jaunty jazz guitar, very reminiscent of (and probably inspired by) The Third Man. The music builds and takes on a driving rhythm as the narrative becomes more tense. I got a huge kick out of this unique and compelling film. A few really shoddy rear projection shots and a somewhat annoying secondary character are the only notable flaws in this otherwise spellbinding treat. Rating: 9


I should note that this viewing was what kicked off my current obsession with noir... previously I had only seen some of the staples, but soon after watching MBC, I started tracking down more and more noir.

[Nighthawk]

NOTE: Moderate spoilers herein.

"Am I watching an Antonioni film?"

This is a thought that crossed my mind more than once when viewing Irving Lerner's lean, mean B picture, Murder By Contract. The film employs a sparse, stark visual style that pre-dates many art house pictures that would come out of Europe in the 60's, and the smooth electric guitar riffs that weave the film's scenes together seem equally prophetic, as films of the 60's would move away from the sweeping scores that dominated the pictures of the 40's and toward a more stripped-down aesthetic.

Of course, this sparseness was due, at least in part, to budgetary constraints. Murder By Contract, which was released at the tail end of the noir cycle in 1958 (the same year as the greatest B picture ever made, Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, was released in a hacked-up-by-the-studio edition), is a low-budget affair. No large sets pieces, cast of thousands, or even well-known actors here. In fact, for the majority of the film, only three characters fill the screen: Claude, played with an effective level of minimalism by Vince Edwards (best-known for playing the titular character on the television medical drama Ben Casey), Marc, the more high-strung of his two handlers for the contract he's supposed to carry out against a witness for the prosecution against Claude's boss, and George, the simple but self-aware other half of the handler duo who develops a level of camaraderie with Claude based on a mixture of his own fear and respect for Claude's clear superiority.

In keeping with the sparseness of the film's visual style and musical score, the plot (like the plots of many B pictures) is straightforward. Claude wants money to buy a house on the Ohio river, for both him and (he claims) his girlfriend. We never see the girlfriend, and later events in the film call into question whether she actually exists. He gets a job as a contract killer, and we see him carry out three different hits in quick succession. This earns him the big job--the one that will give him all the money he needs. Travel from New York to Los Angeles and take out the key witness in a trial against his boss. There's only one problem--the target is a woman.

The moment that Claude discovers this is the first moment we see a crack in his cool, calculating demeanor. See, Claude doesn't adhere to a moral code, at least not in the typical sense; he believes the in survival of the fittest. There's a reason that Marc keeps calling him Superman throughout the film, and it has nothing to do with Clark Kent's alter ego. In Nietzschean philosophy, the Superman is a man who sees through the artificial constructions of morality and operates on a higher plane of reality--he does what he wants, takes what he wants, and achieves what he wants, because he's not bound by socially constructed norms of right and wrong. Claude spells this out when he gives what George calls an "educational" speech to him and Marc about the freedom that his philosophy gives him and when he eviscerates the incompetent waiter at his hotel for failing to do his job correctly. He believes in doing a perfect job, not letting emotions get in the way, and getting paid, and that's all--morality has nothing to do with the actions required by the job.

However, women throw a monkey wrench into his plans. He doesn't like them, see? He doesn't like their unpredictability, their lack of patterned behavior. He knows how men operate--he's always one step ahead of his handlers, who can't control him in any meaningful way. But when women get involved, he loses his cool, and just like Raskolnikov, the protagonist from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, who also fancied himself a Superman but failed to rise above the conventional morality of those around him and become someone who could take at will whatever he wanted (including another human life), Claude eventually finds out that he can't be a morally autonomous Superman. He’s killed many men, but can he kill a woman? The final image of the film is a fitting end to a starkly shot and sparsely populated film, in that it perfectly encapsulates Claude's failure to rise above the morality that he ultimately cannot simply cast aside.