Il bacio dell'assassino

"Killer's Kiss" (1955), acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick's second feature film, starred Jamie Smith, Irene Kane and Frank Silvera.

The story looks like it was partly inspired by Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946): A boxer called on the slide Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith), is awakened from a dream (a stunning piece of surrealism, it's only fault being that it is too short) by the screams of Gloria Price (Irene Kane), who lives on the other side of his apartment block, as her lecherous boss Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera) forces himself on her. Gordon goes to her help, but Rapallo escapes. He falls in love with Gloria, a "dancer" at a nightclub run by Rapallo, but in doing so, he faces Rapallo's wrath and his deadly vengeance.

While the plot may be slightly run-on-the-mill stuff, the movie as a whole is certainly not. Shot on the streets of New York by Kubrick himself, the picture benefits enormously by this "breathing" quality, making the story more believable as it's set and shot in a real place, a rare practice at the time (one wonders if Kubrick did this for purely aesthetic reasons: the budget of the movie was only $40,000 or so, extremely cheap even then for a movie). The camera-work is very high contrast black and white, all the automobiles surfaces gleaming and enabling the tower blocks Gordon rushes past during the final look dark and foreboding. He also inserts a few stylistic shots like Gordon looking through a fish-bowl; but Kubrick uses these sparingly so they always look unexpected. Along with the beautiful cinematography, the action is the highlight of this motion picture: a violent and ruthless boxing match early on, shot with a hand-held camera is exciting and brutal; capturing what the sport is really like. Another set piece is justifiably famous: a climatic fight between Gordon and Rapallo in a mannequin store house with fire-axes.

But there are flaws, flaws than cannot be overlooked even if one is kind to the young Stanley Kubrick and very lenient. First and foremost is the acting: Irene Kane as the woman who sparks off all the trouble is desperately weak and is hard to see why a Rapallo lust after her and Gordon falls in love with her so quickly. Silvera is excellent as our villain and Smith, while nothing special, is good enough for his part, but because Kubrick opted to film the movie "silent" and then put in the sounds in post-production, not only do you have errors like cars driving in the background but no noise issuing forth from them, but the performances are made rather stilted and the dialogue spoken doesn't always match up to their lips. The motion picture is in (a needless) flashback, so we are given a redundant voice-over and the ending in the train-station is overly-sentimental and it is not only alien to the world of noir, but alien also to Kubrick. Despites these flaws, the movie reminds an enjoyable, at times very exciting, film noir that isn't just for Kubrick buffs.