Samuel fuller is everything but a conventional director.When he tries his hand at western ,his western does not look like a routine one ("40 guns" and "run of the arrow").When he tackles thriller,he is so ahead of his time he predates "cuckoos's nest" by more than 10 years( "shock corridor").And when he broaches melodrama (the atmosphere of "kiss" is more melodrama than film noir,Cinderella's prince recalling the one in "barefoot contessa"),he tramples on something that was sacred in the fifties: the romantic drama,redemption...
Constance Towers' magnetism is spellbinding.So horrendous were the chances taken by Fuller's screenplay that with any lesser talent (actress and director) the result could have been disastrous.The script seems sometimes desultory but Fuller always lands on his feet. His film is some kind of tapestry of Bayeux which sometimes verges on bad taste but I guess it's part of the game.
The film is ,in turn,a film noir (the prologue and the last scenes) , a romantic drama (Venice) , a musical (and the song in the hospital exerts a certain queer fascination that impels listening which a lilting chorus encourages), a reversal of the eternal clichés (Griff's phone call or the biter bit)of melodramatic blackmail.
In its form "Kiss" has moments of magnificence: Kelly imagines she can cure the disabled children with her marvelous tales and she takes them for a happy running in the garden of the hospital;a symmetrical scene shows the nurse and Grant watching an amateur film on Venice and it really takes them there;The discovery of Grant's terrible secret is treated with very restricted means,and the fiancé's behavior really makes sense ,we are not even surprised.
A guilty pleasure,but that kind of pleasure,I ask for more!
Constance Towers' magnetism is spellbinding.So horrendous were the chances taken by Fuller's screenplay that with any lesser talent (actress and director) the result could have been disastrous.The script seems sometimes desultory but Fuller always lands on his feet. His film is some kind of tapestry of Bayeux which sometimes verges on bad taste but I guess it's part of the game.
The film is ,in turn,a film noir (the prologue and the last scenes) , a romantic drama (Venice) , a musical (and the song in the hospital exerts a certain queer fascination that impels listening which a lilting chorus encourages), a reversal of the eternal clichés (Griff's phone call or the biter bit)of melodramatic blackmail.
In its form "Kiss" has moments of magnificence: Kelly imagines she can cure the disabled children with her marvelous tales and she takes them for a happy running in the garden of the hospital;a symmetrical scene shows the nurse and Grant watching an amateur film on Venice and it really takes them there;The discovery of Grant's terrible secret is treated with very restricted means,and the fiancé's behavior really makes sense ,we are not even surprised.
A guilty pleasure,but that kind of pleasure,I ask for more!