How Stanley Kubrick’s First Great Film Influenced Quentin Tarantino’s Debut 36 Years Later

In the opening line of his 2012 retrospective review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, “Stanley Kubrick considered The Killing to be his first mature feature, after a couple of short warm-ups.” Hitting theaters in 1956, the movie marked Kubrick's first real foray into major Hollywood filmmaking, coming on the heels of his career as a photographer, his work in short film, and the releases of his first two features, Fear and Desire and Killer’s Kiss. When revisiting The Killing today, the quality that stands out the most is the same thing that’s prevalent in all of Kubrick’s classics: its timelessness. Despite being released nearly 70 years ago in a completely different era of Hollywood, the film has a modern sensibility. It is easy to see the ways in which Kubrick's third picture influenced the genre it belongs to and the movies and directors that would go on to exist within it. Its non-linear structure, shifting perspectives, and use of flashbacks specifically went on to have a huge impact on the career of one of the art form's modern masters, Quentin Tarantino.