[1] Killers Kiss (1955)

Killer's Kiss (1955) (short review)

Being of the sound opinion that Stanley has never made a bad movie (Eyes wide shut detractors...you don't know what you're talking about) I bought Killers's kiss a while ago and put into the much reveered 'to see' pile.

Anyways I was wittling away the hours yesterday so I decided to give a go.

Hmmm...a very intersting movie, a moody film noir told in voiceover. It was made in 1955 on a shoestring budget and was Kubricks second (almost) full length movie after Fear and Desire (1953); it's just under 70 mins long.

It tells the stroy of two losers who fall into an unhelathy, symbiotic relationship. He is a boxer who can't cut it in the ring and she is a lonely heart floating through life haunted by a sad past.

The outline is a bit dated now but deserves credit for it's umcompromisingly flawed characters. The main villian here for example, does not appear to have a single redemtive quality and is a genuinely 'nasty' character...quite a feat for such an early movie. The script is tight and things are kept as plausible as possible, a great and quite often unreported aspect of Kubriks work. There's an intesting part here where the girl recounts her sad sorry story to the memory of her sister dancing; which we see in a haunting flashback. It's the kind of thing you see so frequently nowadys yet Kubrick was doing it all the way back then.

However it's the cinematography that really shines through and makes this film worth watching. There are many fantastic shots to look out for; at one point the camera ends up in a mirror reflecting a girl across the street undressing and another shot to look out for is one where the camera steadily pans outs and looks underneath a bridge, a shot he would use again in a Clockwork Orange; you'll what I'm talking about when you see it.

So all in all a decent movie, it can be seen as a move by Kubrick to familiarise himself with the processes involved with completing a movie where he taken complete artistic control over the project as dierctor, writer and cinematographer etc.

Note:
This movie may well have had some influence on Robert Rossen's 'The Hustler' (which I will review next time) as Paul Newmans dysfunctional relationship with Piper Laurie is an almost carbon copy of Kubricks two protagonists as presented here.

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