Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

This is a surprisingly vivid movie. Some will find the plot a little canned, a vehicle for quick appeal, not quite a B movie enterprise. But I enjoyed so much the two leads--Joan Fontaine as ever luminous and sympathetic, Burt Lancaster in his tough yet lovable best--I loved the whole movie. Furthermore it is photographed, mostly at night, with amazing fluidity and drama, another high point in the film noir style.

Though this is a British-feeling movie set in London, it is topped out with American actors and directed by an American, too. It is a great example of that American archetype known as film noir. It even has the standard core of the best of them, a returning soldier struggling to make sense of normal life. Lancaster has a past that includes two years in a Nazi prison camp. He has the mental scars to show for it (as the text at the beginning explains needlessly for the time, but maybe helpfully for a viewer now).

It is the at first highly unlikely but increasingly plausible relationship between two lonely people that commands the movie. The less compelling plot line of a somewhat stereotypical blackmailer and the associated crimes is handled well in each case, though more about action than psychological depth. You get frustrated when Lancaster never tells Fontaine what is going on in his shady moments, but that's part of his problem and we are to go along. He trusts no one for good reason.

The finale? A bit hasty, maybe, the way that other famous Fontaine thriller is ("Suspicion"), but it's satisfying, too, and not quite a "Hollywood" ending.

The director is little known Norman Foster, who made a bunch of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films in the 1930s, and the quite good "Rachel and the Stranger." Another example of how teamwork lifts even less inspired aspects higher. This has a great cast, excellent music (by the dependable romantic whiz Miklos Rozsa), and great filming (with Russell Metty behind the camera).

The hardest thing about this film is finding it. I bought a really lousy DVD copy of a lousy tape made years ago off an AMC broadcast, and even so it was terrific watching, visually. It has been broadcast on TCM and I think their version would be superior, if you can find someone who has copied it (legality aside, though it might be past copyright).

It's not a masterpiece of a film, but it looks so darned good it should be released in full Blu-Ray and now. Meanwhile, happy hunting for a better copy than mine. It's worth it!

Before he lost his soul, his mind, his spirit in lousy, stupid Disney production craps, Norman Foster was a good film maker, for instance this solid noir crime flick, and also WOMAN ON THE RUN or JOURNEY INTO FEAR; let's put besides some Mr MOTO or CHARLIE CHAN junk. So this one, starring Burt Lancaster sounds familiar if you already saw CRISS CROSS; same kind of character for Lancaster. It is rough, brutal, full of violence and passion. THEY LIVE BY NIGHT revisited and taking place in a big city. Efficient, tense, poignant, with a Burt Lancaster already on his rise to full stardom. And in rocket speed mode.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is directed by Norman Foster and adapted to screenplay by Leonardo Bercovici and Walter Bernstein from the novel of the same name written by Gerald Butler. It stars Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster and Robert Newton. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Russell Metty.

It's a film that has a very up and down relationship among film noir aficionados, which is perfectly understandable. In many ways it's a frustrating viewing experience, because it has some truly great moments and from a visual perspective it's moody personified. In fact the back drops are pure noir dressage, even if the American studio recreation of post war London doesn't exactly look as it should.

Things start brilliantly with a brooding Lancaster accidentally killing the landlord of a public house with one punch, and then subsequently he is pursued through the dank streets of London in a chase sequence of some gusto. Upon entering a bedroom window he is met by a startled Fontaine, and thus begins a love affair between two opposites.

We learn that Lancaster's character is a scarred man from the war, that he was in a Prisoner of War camp, and that he just can't catch a break. Hanging around the vicinity is Newton's cockney low life, who witnessed the killing of the publican and uses this fact to blackmail Lancaster into doing an illegal job for him.

Film is 98% shot at night time, Metty's black and white photography tonally oppressive, this marries up nicely with the trials and tribulations of Lancaster throughout the picture. Fontaine is a radiant foil (this in spite of her suffering morning sickness as she was in early pregnancy), in fact both leading actors work very hard to make the thin screenplay work. But thin it is, and it sadly doesn't deliver a whammy at the finish.

It's a shame that the writing couldn't do justice to the themes of the plot, this is after all a story involving killings, violence, corporal punishment and dissociative disorder. What promises to be a tale of doomed lovers, ends up being a troubled romantic melodrama dressed up in noir clobber. That said, it's never less than enjoyable and the high points (visuals, acting, Rózsa's score) make it worth time invested. 6.5/10

In post-war London, an ex-soldier hides out in a strange woman's apartment in Kiss the Blood off My Hands, a 1948 film starring Burt Lancaster Joan Fontaine, Robert Newton, and Jay Novello.

A man with violent tendencies (or perhaps PTSD), Bill Saunders (Lancaster) gets into a bar brawl and is chased by the police. He opens the window of a lonely woman, Jane (Fontaine) and stays there until the next morning. If she's scared, she manages to keep her cool.

Bill seeks her out later and convinces her to go to the races with him. While on the train going home, he gets into another brawl - and then attacks a police officer. This time, he gets a prison sentence of six months.

Upon his release, the kind-hearted Jane gets him a job as a medical supplies driver at the clinic where she works. Unfortunately for Bill, a man named Harry Carter (Robert Newton) saw the bar fight and blackmails Bill.

Harry and his gang want to steal valuable penicillin that Bill is carrying which is supposed to be administered to sick children. Bill agrees, but changes his mind, and more violence ensues.

Jane and Bill are in love, but he needs to leave town in a hurry and believes he has no place in her life. She doesn't want him to go. Soon she's up to her neck due to his difficulties.

Handsome, hunky Burt Lancaster gives an excellent performance as a man who's had no breaks and whose hair-trigger temper lands him into trouble. Joan Fontaine is lovely, with a gentle, sweet but strong nature.

Decent, atmospheric noir with performances that make it involving. It doesn't live up to its wild title. It's basically dressed up as romance.

Set in England, it features some atmospheric film noir sequences, Burt Lancaster as an American soldier who's been in a Nazi prison and has what we would now call PTSD, Joan Fontaine as the upstanding woman whose apartment he sneaks into when he's running away from the cops, and Robert Newton as a thoroughly enjoyable over-the-top villain. Did I mention Burt's shirtless scenes? His eyes are photographed extremely well; I'm not sure if he looks more handsome in any other movie, even TRAPEZE. We even see (or rather, hear) Burt being flogged as part of the English justice system.

Fontaine and Lancaster make a reasonably good romantic couple. Director Norman Foster and his cinematographer, Russell Metty, add some noir styling. I found it a very entertaining film noir plus romance. The "oops, gotta follow the Code" ending seems tacked on, but it doesn't spoil the film. Burt Lancaster fans will certainly enjoy it.