Andrei Tarkovsky made an Ernest Hemingway adaptation - The Killers
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Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky changed cinema forever. Through his unforgettable experiments with the cinematic medium, Tarkovsky delved deeper into the fundamental relationship between film, time and space than any other filmmaker before him. Exploring universal subjects such as the artistic process, memory and spiritualism, Tarkovsky’s films have become a prominent part of the global canon.
Over the course of his career, the revered director only made a handful of features, but each of them is now recognised as a bonafide masterpiece. Ranging from the deeply personal Mirror to the all-encompassing, majestic Stalker, Tarkovsky worked with genres such as sci-fi, autofiction as well as historical drama. However, did you know that the Russian director started his filmmaking career with an attempt at American noir?
Although it might seem a little strange, that’s exactly what Tarkovsky did when he studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. Now credited as the filmmaker’s first directorial project, The Killers is an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s eponymous short story. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because there was already a very prominent adaptation – starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner – before Tarkovsky tried his hand at directing.
Tarkovsky made his version of The Killers with the help of fellow students Marika Beiku and Aleksandr Gordon, dividing the narrative structure into three parts. Of course, the uniquely American atmospheric paranoia is not properly translated by Tarkovsky, but the nascent director was already showing signs of having a unique approach to cinematic language. According to Gordon, Tarkovsky demonstrated an innate understanding of visual grammar.
During an interview, Gordon remembered (via Nostalghia): "The institute had very few props. We brought everything from home, from relatives and friends. I remember Andrei brought a round wall clock and his grandmother’s small case for Shukshin. In the institute studio, we fixed up an American bar (something that was regarded as the symbol of depravity) with bottles that bore foreign labels. It was a major event in the institute; students came to the set on guided tours."
Gordon, who eventually became Tarkovsky’s brother-in-law, added: "We divided the story into three parts. I was in charge of the scene with the boxer Shukshin. The main scene in the cafe where the murderers, who were wearing black coats, hats and gloves, waited for their victim. Andrei and Marika did that, but Andrei was definitely in charge. Tarkovsky was serious about his work but jolly at the same time. He gave the camera students, Alvarez and Rybin, plenty of time to do the lighting well. He created long pauses, generated lots of tension in those pauses, and demanded that the actors be natural."
Although Tarkovsky never properly ventured into noir, his interpretation of The Killers will inevitably make audiences wonder what the director’s ideas regarding noir would look like if they were given room to breathe. While the genre did take its own form within the context of Soviet Parallel Cinema, it would have been fascinating to see how Tarkovsky’s experiments with time interacted with the highly specific framework of film noir in a fleshed-out feature.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/andrei-tarkovsky-ernest-hemingway-adaptation/