This Criterion DVD represents a rare opportunity to compare multiple screen adaptations of the same story: Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers. There are three adaptations on this two-disc set: Robert Siodmak’s 1946 Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1958 student film entitled simply The Killers, and Don Siegel’s 1964 adaptation, originally slated to be the first TV movie ever.

To understand the films, you have to know a little about the Hemingway’s short story. He wrote The Killers in 1927, not long after World War I and just at the beginning of the Great Depression. It is a stark and simple tale, very much in line with Hemingway’s tendency to take a slice of life, write about it, and not resolve it, in any obvious way, at least. It begins as two hoods walk into a diner, looking for “the Swede,” who they’re going to kill for no specified reason. After terrifying the diner’s owner and cook and one customer (Hemingway’s Nick Adams in a walk-on), it becomes apparent that the Swede isn’t going to come in for an evening meal, and the hoods leave. While they are looking for him, Adams goes and warns the Swede, who rather than run, seems to calmly accept his fate, and quietly waits for his killers to arrive. And that’s it — we don’t see the Swede killed and we don’t find out what they want him for. The story simply ends.

Tarkovsky’s short film (right, with Tarkovsky as the second customer) is the closest to the source material — it begins with the men entering the diner, reproduces their menacing dialog faithfully, then ends where the story ends, with Nick Adams leaving the Swede to face his killers alone. It is in Russian with English subtitles, and is clearly a student film — Tarkovsky (who co-directed with fellow students of the Soviet film school VGIK) displays little of the stunning style that would make him an art-film darling in the 70s and 80s. Still and all, there is a simple, straight-ahead quality that serves the material well.

Producer Mark Hellinger originally wanted Don Siegel to direct the 1946 version, and though it’s difficult to tell for sure (Siegel was in a different place in 1946), I can’t imagine the consummate director of ’60s and 70s detective cool directing this dark, classic noir.

It’s opening shot signals it’s intentions just fine — it can’t get much more noir. The high-contrast, back-lit set . . . the alternating pools of light and dark, light and dark . . . Two men walk into the shot, we see them in silouhette only, and they meet for a second, silently contemplating the diner across the street, then separate to check out either side. The sense of dread is palpable, you can cut it with the proverbial knife as they enter the building, demanding to see the Swede.

It is an absolutely gorgeous opening, perhaps the archetypal one from all of film noir, and I’d like to see it without the titles over it. For me it is the single enduring image from the film, and much of what comes after, though exciting, is not quite up to the opening. Not that it isn’t a satisfying film — it is. It’s just that it descends a notch into more standard noir territory after Hemingway’s original plot is played out. Through a series of flash-backs, Siodmak and screenwriters (Anthony Veillers, Richard Brooks and an uncredited John Huston) fill in the gaps. We find out who and why and how the Swede is killed, and what ultimately becomes of his killers; it seems it had something to do with a heist-gone-wrong. Through the device of multiple narrators, we are filled in on what may — or may not have — happened. As the many mirrors in the set decoration suggest, we’re can’t be sure who everyone really is, nor are we sure about the reliability of their retrospective witness.

Burt Lancaster, in his first screen role, is just fine as the Swede, bringing a certain brawny stupidity to the part. Ava Gardner is an exemplary femme fatale, who takes advantage of that stupidity to ultimately do him in. In their first scene together, Lancaster falls for her like a mooning, poled ox; for her part, Gardner eyes him coyly as he does, and we can see the wheels upon wheels turning in her lovely head. Rounding out the leads, Edmund O’brien does his usual detective schtick, this time as an insurance investigator (post-war noirs didn’t like the fuzz) investigating the Swede’s death, obsessed with finding out why he didn’t run.

Siodmak was a veteran director of the German Expressionist school, and he knew a thing or two about black-and-white photography. Together with cinematographer Elwood Bredell, they created a stark, shadowed world in which good and evil aren’t easily distinguished. Though the plotting is a tad on the predictable side, there are a number of breathtaking images, all created on a soundstage, that make this a beautiful film. In one, the Swede is buried on a moonlit night, attended by a few lone cronies. In another (right), one of those cronies teaches him about the stars in a night-time cell.

All in all, Siodmak’s version of The Killers is an above average noir, and Criterion’s transfer and digital cleaning-up of the image are impeccable, as usual. Of the three versions of the Hemingway tale on the Criterion discs, it is definitely the class act.

Finally, we come to Siegel’s 1964 adaptation. The furthest from Hemingway’s original, it substitutes race-car driver Johnny North (John Cassavetes) for the Swede and a school for the blind (don’t ask) for the diner. Like Siodmak’s version, Siegel’s fills in the backstory through flashbacks, and it’s basically the same plot, but with one crucial difference: in the 1946 version, it is an insurance investigator who is obsessed with finding out why he waits for his killers. In this version, it’s the head killer himself, played by none other than Lee Marvin.

This version is a film noir in plot, but not in atmosphere or style. It’s brightly lit and colorful, designed to show up well on the small television screens of the day. The cast is television all the way — Claude Akins, Angie Dickinson (a pale imitation of Ava Gardner as the femme fatale), Norman Fell and Clu Gulager (!) as Marvin’s partner. And in the casting’s crowning glory, Ronald Reagan plays Jack Browning, the bad guy whose machinations help do Johnny North in. It was Reagan’s last role, his only heavy, and he reportedly hated it that he had to slap Dickinson in one scene.

Don Siegel, who seven years later would make Dirty Harry, directs with terminal ’60s cool, with a bongo-laden score in the background and cheesy rear-projection in the driving scenes. The Southern California creosote hills are an obvious stand-in for Florida, and the closing proudly declares “Filmed at Universal City.”

But for all its dated, TV-movie clichés, it is mildly enjoyable if taken as a period piece, and there are some nice Siegel-ian touches: when Marvin and Gulager swagger into the school for the blind, they are the only ones wearing dark glasses. Gulager does his best imitation of a cold-blooded killer, delivering his lines with brio and even giggling maniacally once or twice. And maybe it’s the flat TV lighting, but Angie Dickinson has rarely looked so appealing.

Although only one of the films might legitimately be called a classic, it is nevertheless fascinating to see what three very different directors do with the same, spare Hemingway story. The feature-length treatments are very much products of their time. The Siodmak is a dark, spare noir, shot by a German director at the end of the second World War, when the extent of Nazi depredations were just becoming known. Although not a cop, it’s seeker-after-truth is still a representative of law and order. In Siegel’s version, made as the counter-culture began to question traditional values, the questioner is the killer himself, an anti-hero who nevertheless seems more moral than Dickinson’s character. When he finally finds out why North didn’t run, he’s sickened, telling her “you killed him.”

The extras are plentiful, as befits a premium Criterion edition. There are essays by director Paul Schrader, novelist Jonathan Lethem and writer Geoffrey O’brien. There’s a radio adaptation starring Lancaster and Shelley Winters, an interview with Clu Gulager, and an excerpt from Don Siegel’s autobigraphy. Production stills and trailers abound, but my favorite extra is a long video interview with author Stewart Kaminsky, who obviously knows and loves his films noir.

All in all, this is a pleasing package from Criterion. I would think it is essential for fans of film noir, and perhaps of Papa Hemingway as well.