The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection
by Samuel Fuller
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Eisley, Constance Towers, Michael Dante, Patsy Kelly, Virginia GreyDirector: Samuel Fuller
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez
Producer: Samuel Fuller
Writer: Samuel Fuller
Editor: Jerome Thoms
Producer: Leon Fromkess
Producer: Sam Firks
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.66:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-08-26
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Good Fuller
Summary: 3 Stars
Maverick American filmmaker Sam Fuller was both a progressive and a prude, and no film of his better illustrates this schismic personal dichotomy, echoed in his art's use of high and low techniques, than his 1964 black and white film noir melodrama The Naked Kiss, a cult classic whose title derives from its lead character, a prostitute named Kelly, who describes the kiss of the fianc?e she kills, that way, meaning she could tell he was a sexual deviant from the get go. It's a film that has brilliance, inanity, memorable scenes of realism, and trite predictable scenes of sheer fantasy- such as the mention of the titular act, which is not real, but works symbolically to explain certain elements of the lead character's behavior.
That lead character, a hooker named Kelly, is played by B film mainstay Constance Towers, whose decades of acting in low budget films gave her the limited sort of celebrity appeal that only grows with time. For the last few years more people have become familiar with her role as the evil Helena Cassadine on the ABC soap opera General Hospital than in all her previous roles combined, but The Naked Kiss may be her most memorable film role. The film opens with a bang- a shot of Kelly beating the crap out of a man with her purse. He's her pimp, Farland, but he has been cheating her. After she knocks him out she takes only the $75 owed to her, and not a penny more. But, in their struggle, he pulls off her wig, to reveal her as bald. He has shaved her as an act of revenge for a perceived betrayal. It is one of the most kinetic and memorable openings in film history. After getting her money, Kelly puts her wig back on, while looking in a mirror and primping, as the title credits roll. Already, Fuller has set up the character as a `bad girl', but one with scruples. She will be the classic `hooker with a heart of gold', but Fuller goes beyond the stereotype, although he does so only by saturating the viewer with so many other stereotypes and clich?s that one is forced to deal with the surfeit as its own raison d'etre.
Only Fuller's films run the gamut from low brow Ed Wood-like total crap to great moments and writing that rival the best moments in a Stanley Kubrick or Martin Scorsese film. Yet, he never had total control over any of his material. Even his magnum opus, the terrific war film The Big Red One, was butchered by its studio, and not restored until nearly a quarter century later. Similarly, The Naked Kiss was butchered to a point where Fuller threatened to have his name removed from it. In some ways, this film superficially resembles Federico Fellini's Nights Of Cabiria, save that Kelly ends up getting the upper hand, in true Hollywood fashion, albeit in a way that Hollywood would never allow. All of Fuller's films are didactic treatises where his characters, usually outcasts and reprobates, do the things that `good people' should do, but are too fearful to do. A Fullerian antihero walks the walk that typical Hollywood characters are only willing to talk. Fuller empathizes with the lowlifes in his films, even as he condemns their lifestyles, taking the most Christian ideal of loving the sinner while hating the sin to heart. Of course, there is a big ethical difference between harmless prostitution and wicked pedophilia, yet it is prostitution that gets a dressing down as a social evil from Kelly, while pedophilia merely gets a death blow, and no such direct address. Fuller also takes a very unique approach to triteness by not just using clich?s but wallowing in their excesses until they have to be accepted as part of his slightly askew universe. Only then does he show his traces of originality.
Still, many of his metaphors are too forced- such as his equation of Grant's pedophilia with the hypocrisy and sexual repression of the townsfolk. It's as if one is to believe that the evils of pre-sexual liberation mores were behind Grant's perversion. Only Fuller could be daring enough to cover such a topic- as well as prostitution and abortion, yet do so in the most hackneyed ways playing against the most direct and honest. It is this meshing of disparate methods that makes Fuller so unique, even when at his worst and most pedantic. This carries over into his film style, where he is a primitive, artistically. The camerawork by cinematographer Stanley Cortez is often wobbly, off-kilter, out of focus, full of glare, and the editing is often bizarre. The DVD, put out by Passion Productions, has no extras, but the print is surprisingly high in quality- better than some of the titles put out by bigger companies like Fox-Lorber or The Criterion Collection.
Yet, compared to such stiff moralistic Hollywood fare as Charles Laughton's Night Of The Hunter, which also deals with child abuse, one can see why a film like this chose to go over the top to slip in its medicine with such candied fluff. The Naked Kiss is anomic, leaves many of its scenes open to interpretation, is over-simplistic, ahead of its time, trite, yet also has moments of true human emotion. It is the definition of that work of art which is definitely not great, but, in a sense, essential, for it perfectly distills the contradictions of a time between the repressed black and white morality of the Cold War 1950s and the sludgy gray of the coming morass of Civil Rights Era abuses and mass murder in Vietnam. But, when all of that is said and one, it's just a fun film to watch, beyond any analysis, and that's a rare enough quality in any age.
Summary of The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection
The setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit into mainstream society. But in the strange, hallucinatory territory of writer/director/producer Sam Fuller, perverse secrets simmer beneath a seemingly wholesome facade. Criterion is proud to present The Naked Kiss in a beautiful widescreen transfer.Until Sam Fuller came along, movies in the 1960s were still bound by Hollywood's self-imposed and often hypocritical rules of discretion. The crimes and misdemeanors of lurid pulp fiction remained on drugstore spin-racks and newsstands, diluted on screen until Fuller, with his cigar-chomping audacity and confrontational style, liberated movies from artificial restraint and kicked them into the meaner, darker, but more honest maturity of the post-Kennedy era. Shock Corridor announced Fuller's brazen agenda a year earlier, but The Naked Kiss is even more astonishing because its trashy, provocative plot dares to find depth and humanity beneath the hardened shells of corrupted souls.
The film begins like no other before it: Kelly (Constance Towers) beats her pimp with a handbag, grabs the cash he owes her, adjusts her telltale wig and makeup, and sets out to begin life anew, free from the shame of prostitution. Two years later she's in Grantville, a typically Rockwellian slice of Americana, working wonders with disabled kids and gaining distance from her miserable past. She's even engaged to the town's most respected citizen, but dark clouds are gathering: a corrupt cop knows Kelly's hidden secrets; a nearby brothel taints the community; and a pedophile is lurking in the shadows. Through it all, Fuller calibrates The Naked Kiss with such precision that sentiment and sordidness can run parallel without colliding, shifting from outrageous vice to shameless tear-jerking with equal facility. With twisted tricks up his sleeve, Fuller can be accused of tabloid tackiness, but that would be missing the point: In Fuller's cruel and ugly world, compassion still finds a way to survive. --Jeff Shannon
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