Il bacio dell'assassino

A young Stanley Kubrick's bare-budget film - perhaps his first "mainline" movie - shows him still in the minor leagues but very close to making it to the Major Leagues. In fact, he did so the following year with "The Killing," a film noir that still ranks among the best. At any rate, this is an opportunity to see Kubrick at work right before he "makes it" in the business.

With an almost-nothing budget you aren't going to draw too many professional actors, and that certainly was the case here, but still is worth watching. It's definitely a "B" noir that is more melodrama than crime until the ending when it gets very, very suspenseful featuring a chase over New York City rooftops and then into abandoned warehouses.

Jamie Smith and Irene Kane are the stars and if you've never heard of them, it's probably because they weren't exactly Humphey Bogart and Bette Davis, acting-wise. The other star, Frank Silvera, at least is a name I recognized.

Overall, the best feature may be the camera-work. It gives us a preview of the visual talents that Kubrick would bring to the big screen in following decade. On its own merits, if you are a film noir fan, you'll want this in your collection.

In introducing "Killer's Kiss" on TCM, host Eddie Muller apologized all over himself for what a ragged, experimental film it was from newbie director Stanley Kubrick. But the thing is, as Muller himself pointed out, inexperienced Kubrick is still better than the best film of any number of other directors, so this one's a treat.

It's ragged to be sure, and it's clear that Kubrick had the outlines of a film that he then padded out to feature length proportions, but there's hardly a shot in the the thing that isn't remarkable in some way. It's my favorite kind of noir -- dripping in atmosphere, plot incidental (though there are some clever developments in the story), tough guy meter set to 11. There's a somewhat famous climactic fight scene set in a mannequin factory that's clearly used for its weirdness only, and the whole film is like that.

Many shots from this movie are used in TCM's intro montage to their late-night programming.

Grade: A-

Stanley Kubrick's career really took off in 1956, upon the release of his first masterpiece; "The Killing", after which he would go on to make many much loved cinema classics such as "Dr Strangelove", "The Shining" and "A Clockwork Orange", to name a few. This movie is, however, no masterpiece; but that's not to say it's without it's plus points.

First and foremost, this movie is admirable for it's directing, which is excellent. Of course Stanley Kubrick would go on to show himself as a genius behind the camera, and this movie is an early taste of that genius in the directorial department. Secondly, despite the B-grade cast, the acting is not bad at all. It's not marvelous, but considering the cast's accomplishments, previously and after this movie was made, it's better than one would expect.

One of the movie's major flaws, however, is its lack of ideas. There are some nice ideas in the film, such as the part where Gloria tells her story to a backdrop of her sister doing ballet, and the Rear Window style way that the Gloria and Davy meet, but as the film is only 67 minutes long, it felt at times that Kubrick was spending too long on certain sequences, which is a problem if the movie is as short as this one is as it looked as though Kubrick was just dragging things out in order to meet an acceptable running time. That might be so bad in a longer film, but here it's not good.

This movie is a nice, taut little thriller and is definitely recommended to people that want to see some early Kubrick and thereby see how he developed as a filmmaker, but it's not a great film and I don't recommend going into this movie expecting it to be one.

"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.

It's just over an hour long and even so we have the trademark Kubrick opening, where he takes his own sweet time in letting us know what the film is about but somehow draws us in all the same. Look: it's an hour long, and it's a slight, hour-long kind of story. Don't expect anything more. I think there's also rather clearly a moment when Kubrick realised that he didn't know how he was going to end it all - to be honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that a similar thing happened on "2001", "Eyes Wide Shut" and even "Dr. Strangelove". In each of these cases it was the prompt for a daring and unconventional conclusion. I wish I could say that was the case here.

This doesn't prevent it from being involving while it lasts. Kubrick once again demonstrates the he could point a camera at anything at all and make it interesting - the images are amazing, yet entirely functional. If you have ever loved any black-and-white camera work you'll love this. It's also a masterpiece of violence-without-violence, if you know what I mean. It deserves to be more well-known than it is.