Kiss Her Goodbye

Late-'50s indie with a putrid aroma, about an average Joe trying to protect his mentally retarded but nubile sister from the attentions of uncomprehending suitors. Not much happens, but from the frenzy of fanfares in the bloated musical score, you'd think we'd dropped the A-bomb on Moscow. I also notice that while the movie shakes its little finger at these guys for slobbering all over its heroine, it has no compunction about endless footage of Sharon Farrell in a bikini, Sharon Farrell in a tiny waitress outfit, Sharon Farrell at a playground innocently showing her panties. Her character makes no sense -- she's an incoherent screaming idiot one minute, a perfectly rational miss the next -- and Elaine Stritch, as a youngish widow stuck on the brother, doesn't fit comfortably into a conventional role. (The character also has an infant son, who is the basis of one dramatic incident and then is promptly forgotten.) Steven Hill, as the guy, maintains his dignity in another inconsistent role, and the black-and-white Florida photography is crisp and evocative, but it's one of those lurid Bs that makes you run for the shower once it's over.

Turner Classic Movies channel just showed this (10/10/06). I'd never heard of it before. I suspect it was barely released in 1959. It's a very low-budget film that's supposed to take place in Florida, but I'm not sure it was entirely shot there. Some of it looks like Southern Cal. Steven Hill, Elaine Stritch, Andrew Prine and a nineteen-year-old Sharon Farrell are professional and do the best they can with a weak script and in what looks like an amateur production. I see it's the director's only credit. The film is not bad, somewhat interesting, but never rises above its limits. A minor curio. It certainly kept me watching, but in the end it didn't amount to much.

This was kind of a surprise finding this movie. I was skimming around my ONDemand Spectrum menu and saw Steven Hill listed. I thoroughly enjoy the two Alfred Hitchcock programs and know I liked him on both series so I decided to try a few minutes of it to see how I'd like it and see if I recognized any other people in this movie. There were a few other people from the Alfred programs I recognized. Won't have to list them because if you watch these shows like I do than you probably recognized them yourself.

Overall this was a pretty good movie. I think the one flaw I wanted to list was how quickly Ed and Marge fell in love. I could've done without that plotpoint.

Ed has basically uprooted his life for his sister. He's not bitter or angry about it. He's a very supportive and kind brother. Ed's honest about some parts of Emily's troubles...he says that she has the mind of a child. She does do some things without really thinking about them to start with. But some of this stuff is also on the men gawking at her. I'll use the two examples I have. At the beginning of the movie it shows Emily being interested in a hula hoop. She's over there hula hooping and the men are gawking at her like she's doing a strip tease. Another scene features Emily undressing in front of a window where the blinds are open and the men are again gawking at her like she's dancing around a pole.

I will feature a scene on the opposite site of the scale. Emily's playing on playground equipment and she's got a dress on. I'm sure you can predict how many times she's flashing her panties to the crowd and doesn't realize she's basically putting on a show for the crowd. Even a lady comes up and cautions her about what she's doing.

I still say Ed's a good brother but he's also only the one person. It seems like if he wasn't with Emily that he expected her to stay in her room. He's trying his best to shield his sister from bad things because Emily is capable of getting into plenty of trouble. And she has and she will get into serious trouble in this movie. Ed tries to cover for her but it just doesn't work. The evidence points clearly to Emily.

I'm trying to be careful with this review because I don't want to give too many details away because this movie is really worth a watch if you're able to catch it on. I'm not sure if this has been playing on Sundance (that was the menu I spotted it on when I was skimming) or if this movie is one that's rarely or never played but managed to show up on the ONDemand menu.

I'm not sure why so many people have denigrated this movie. In the fabulous 50s this type of issue wasn't talked about or even whispered. I salute the director and producers for thinking outside the norms of the day. Miss Farrell was amazing in her first role. Low budget yes, but low budget doesn't always correlate to low quality. I stumbled into this movie by accident but would recommend to others to give it a try. For its time they surely would have had difficulty getting funding and promotion as Hollywood seldom sticks out their neck to reach beyond the cookie cutter scripts they celebrate. Well done.

Elaine Stritch (already a decade into a fascinating Broadway career that would span more than 60 years) and a surprisingly handsome and already understated Steven Hill (MUCH later to create the solid district attorney in the first years of LAW AND ORDER) provide the main points of interest in this wanna-be tawdry independent film that evokes nothing so much as LOLITA meets LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA while driving through Tennessee Williams territory trying to find the way to KEY LARGO. It never gets there.

The inconsistent writing (dropped motivations and theatre references coming out of nowhere) is not helped by the cinematography and direction which looks like 50's television not movie work. A bad episode of Perry Mason perhaps - before the murder happens - all freshly scrubbed, possibly TOO cleanly filmed set-up, lots of innuendo (but none a CBS censor wouldn't pass), no real punch even when it tries to steal ideas from classic tension makers like FRANKENSTEIN (the scene with the monster and the little girl) or DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS (the frustrated boy with oppressive parent). It isn't good enough to be really bad, or bad enough to be really good.

While only released after Stritch's Broadway musical GOLDILOCKS had come and gone (Oct. '58 - Feb. '59 despite a wonderful score and hilarious book - Noël Coward saw Stritch in THAT and wrote a show for her as a result), KISS HER GOODBYE was probably filmed just before she went into rehearsals for the musical - shortly after the all too quick Broadway flop of THE SIN OF PAT MULDOON (one week in 1957 - not long enough to take the bloom off Stritch's well received performance in BUS STOP, 1955-56, which probably got her this role).

The film, like ...PAT MULDOON, didn't appear to make enough of an impression to actually hurt anyone's career - but it didn't help anyone's either. The New York Times Directory of Film doesn't even list a N.Y. Times review for it - though it does list five other film notices involving Hill from 1950 to 1965 and three others for Stritch from 1957 to January of '59.

What a pity. The leads in KISS HER GOODBYE deserved better, but fans of their mature work should enjoy seeing them near the start.