In the 1960s, Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson starred in two pivotal gangster movies that dragged American crime cinema out of the shadows of film noir and into the harsh technicolor daylight of the nuclear age. The first was Don Siegel’s The Killers in 1964—a reworking of the Ernest Hemingway short story which had been originally filmed in 1946. The film co-starred Ronald Reagan in perhaps his finest role as a vicious underworld mobster. Siegel brought a brutal, calculating violence to his film which was further developed by John Boorman three years later with Point Blank. Where Siegel’s characters merely lived in their ultra-modern landscape, Boorman’s players were left cold and alienated by the clean, bright and colorful modern world.

Loosely based on pulp novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake, Boorman shifted the book’s east coast location to the blue skies and golden beaches of California. He changed the central character from the likeable tough “Parker,” to the hungry, relentless loner “Walker.” In Lee Marvin, Boorman was blessed with the only actor capable of inhabiting this complex role. Boorman has since said that Marvin used his own “brutalizing” experiences as a sniper in the Second World War to bring Walker to life—experiences which had “dehumanized him and left him desperately searching for his humanity.” It is certainly one of Marvin’s greatest performances (his next movie with Boorman Hell in the Pacific is equally as brilliant) and he was superbly supported by Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn and John Vernon.

Boorman’s powerfully iconic and artful direction puts Point Blank above any other crime movie of that era, and though lightly praised at the time, it is fair to say with Point Blank there would have been no Bullitt or Dirty Harry or any of the long list of gritty crime thrillers that dominated the 1970s.
 

 

Lee Marvin and John Boorman discuss filming a scene.
 

Lee Marvin as Walker.
 

John Boorman and Lee Marvin rehearse the iconic walking sequence.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boorman discusses filming with Angie Dickinson.
 

Angie Dickinson as Chris
 

 

 

The famous slapping sequence when Angie Dickinson pummels Lee Marvin.
 

There were three takes for this famous scene, where Dickinson allegedly battered Marvin in return for his rough treatment in ‘The Killers.’
 

 

 

 

 

Boorman rehearses with Dickinson for the slapping scene.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Marvin confronts John Vernon as Mal Reese.
 

John Boorman watches on as Marvin and Keenan Wynn rehearse.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Marvin and John Vernon.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Via Cine Archive and Edit Room Floor