Il bacio del bandito

The Kissing Bandit (1948)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Chico (J. Carrol Naish) has Ricardo (Frank Sinatra) come to Mexico because it turns out that he's the son of the infamous Kissing Bandit. Chico plans on taking the guy, who has been staying in Boston, and turning him into the next Kissing Bandit to steal more than just the heart from Teresa (Kathryn Grayson) but Ricardo has other ideas.

THE KISSING BANDIT is apparently a film that Sinatra hated making and it's pretty obvious that this film simply wasn't meant for him. While going through some Sinatra pictures on Turner Classic Movies, host Robert Osborne made some good comments about the legends early days at MGM. Instead of playing off his image and music, MGM instead decided to make Sinatra play nerdy roles where the characters didn't know how to speak to women and usually made a fool of themselves. With these types of roles it's easy to see why Sinatra's career would pretty much crumble before being rescued with FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.

As for THE KISSING BANDIT, it's pretty darn bad on several levels but we can start with Sinatra who is downright awful here. Why on Earth anyone would think this would be a good role for him is just mind-blowing and you have to wonder if someone in MGM's office really wanted to kill his career with this film. Playing a Mexican bandit is just downright stupid and especially with there being no attempt for even an accent. It's also clear that Sinatra isn't giving the character much effort but I guess we can't blame him.

Naish and Grayson are both good in their roles and I'd argue that the Technicolor is quite good and at least gives us some pretty stuff to look at. With that being said, the rest of THE KISSING BANDIT is rather bad with some really boring dance numbers and all of the songs are rather forgettable. One has to wonder what Sinatra thought about singing these things.

THE KISSING BANDIT is a film Sinatra hated and it's easy to see why.