Film review: Murder by Contract (1958)

Not to repeat myself, but this is an odd film.  It's definitely a B-Picture - no well-known actors (although several of them had long careers, particularly in TV), minimal music (and what there is, pleasant vaguely Spanish guitar-picking, seems jarringly out of sync with the noirish goings-on) and most of the action takes place in a series of anonymous rooms.  But Martin Scorsese claimed that of all films it was the most influential on his filmmaking, so let's delve a little deeper.  The main character, Claude, starts the film by essentially requesting to become a hitman.  His reasons are purely financial: he has his sights set on a "house on the Ohio River" (we begin in Cleveland - just like The Fortune Cookie - who knew it was such a hub for filmmaking?) but realizes that his current job doesn't pay him nearly enough to buy it in anything like the near future.  The man he goes to initially denies that he has anything to do with "contracts" but then says he'll call Claude back - but if Claude doesn't answer immediately, that'll be it.  So Claude has to stay by his phone for the next two weeks (after he leaves, the man calls his boss and reveals that the two weeks is a test - he also reveals that he thinks Claude is "too smart"), and we see him working out, reading the newspaper and just sitting staring.  I think I read somewhere that this film is also an influence on Melville's Le Samourai (itself a major influence on John Woo and thus Chow Yun Fat), and Claude has the same too-cool-for-school existential ennui as Alain Delon in that film.  He also has a code: don't get emotional, never carry anything illegal, and everything is transactional.  His third contract (the first one involved posing as a barber - we see him sharpening the cutthroat razor, the second involved shutting off the oxygen of a patient in hospital) is on the man who hired him in the first place, revealing that Claude was indeed "too smart" to rely on a middleman for long.  Each of these contracts pays him $500, which he notes in a little notebook, which also reveals that his house will cost $20,000 (in Cleveland? in 1958?  Must be a mansion!)  So it's probably a relief when the big boss gives him a job that will pay $5,000, the only catch being that it's the witness in a federal case, and it's in LA.  We are then introduced to the other two major characters in the film, George (bespectacled, balding, mild-mannered, wears a bow tie) and Marc (shorter, fully-tonsured, does his best Jack Lemmon-being-exasperated impression), who are the goons employed to mind Claude and make sure he does the job.  They grow steadily more and more anxious as Claude is content to see the sights of LA (swimming, fishing, going to the zoo, etc.) as the days breeze by and he doesn't even inquire the name of the hit.  It's only after well over a week, with only days before the trial begins, that he finally asks.  They take him to a spot in Coldwater Canyon overlooking the house the witness is cooped up in (surrounded by cops) and at that point he finds out that his target, pianist Billie Williams, is in fact a woman.  For the first time we see Claude genuinely flustered.  It isn't that he has qualms about killing women, we discover, it's that he believes that women are "unpredictable" and thus is kicking himself for not demanding twice the money.  George and Marc advise him strenuously against contacting the big boss and demanding more money, however, because they say, that will be the end of Claude.  The rest of the movie is Claude's repeated, thwarted attempts to bump her off.  After two failures, one involving the use of guns, usually a complete no-no in Claude's rulebook, Claude announces that this hit is jinxed and he's giving up.  George and Marc then offer to give him a ride to the train (taking planes is another Claude no-no) but are instead taking him to an old movie lot to bump him off.  Let's just say it doesn't go well for them.  Claude then decides to give it one more go and calls the big boss demanding $10K or he'll personally come after him.  He gets it, and Claude consults city plans to find a way to get in the house without having to go through the cops.  Then... well, you'll have to watch it, won't you?  But hurry up, one of the reasons we watched it was that it's leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month.  Also the still they use to represent the movie when you search for it is a major spoiler for the end.  So what's so odd about it?  Well, the character of Claude is very unusual for a character in a fifties American film.  He's very modern.  I can't help but wonder if his French name is because his slightly-inhuman quality reminds one of the protagonist in The Stranger.  Also, it just...ends.  Mind you, that's not all that uncommon for these B-pictures - I had the same reaction about Detour when we watched it.  I like this one better than that one, though.  As Joe Bob likes to say: check it out!