The Cinematheque

“A terrific, no-nonsense B‑movie which comes on like something by Jean-Pierre Melville: cool, calm, and dispassionate … A taut, spare, amoral film; it doesn’t look restricted, it looks restrained. Well ahead of its time, too.”

Tom Charity, Time Out

Kudos to Martin Scorsese for saving this bijou of a B‑picture from obscurity. No other film has influenced the director more (sayeth Scorsese himself), with Taxi Driver cited as a spiritual successor. A noir of the most austere and existential variety, Murder by Contract follows a suave, remorseless hitman (Vince Edwards) who dispatches strangers for the competitive salary and the principled pleasure of a job done right. His biggest paycheque yet delivers him to sunny California, where two jittery handlers are tasked with keeping the nonchalant killer on schedule. The snag: the target is a woman—a problem owing not to some chivalrous code but the unpredictable nature of the opposite sex. Scorsese has evoked Bresson and Godard when exalting the film’s economy; others have drawn comparisons to Melville, whose laconic thrillers—Le samouraï, in particular—bear striking resemblance to this late-chapter noir.

“[A] rarely screened 1958 gem about the mind of a contract killer … Neither the screenwriter (Ben Simcoe) nor the director (Irving Lerner) ever acquired a big reputation, but here they achieved something singular and nearly perfect.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

“An example of an American B‑movie that is 100 times better than the film it played with on a double bill … I was overwhelmed by the severity of its style.”

Martin Scorsese