Kiss of Death (1947)
Three Reasons for Greatness: Plot, Polish, and Victor Mature
1) Victor Mature gives a impassioned, inward-looking performance to die for. 2) The story is gripping, and reasonable, and pits the lone man trying to go right against all the forces that all of us face: the system, the bad guys, and our own mistakes. 3) The studio system is at its technical best and supports the story with polished, professional acting, camera-work, direction, and sound.
In the general sense, these are actually pretty basic things that every movie might have: a lead we can identify with, a great story, and well made. Kiss of Death lacks only those rare qualities of originality in some other noir films, like we see in Sunset Boulevard or Detour, to keep it from the stratosphere. But it's better than most by far.
Mature, throughout, is not portrayed as a criminal type, "One of those mugs that don't belong to human society," as Donlevy says as Assistant D.A. Bianco has good handwriting, he has composure, he loves his kids. And a great small reinforcement happens when he goes to the orphanage to see them and the nun looks at him and his two cop guards and asks, "Which one of you gentlemen is Mr. Bianco." The camera lets us pan over them and we see them as the same.
And he mildly says, "That's me." Mature is really amazing in a role that could have been hammed up or stiffened up. His large, meaty presence is presented with a kind of innocence, as if he is the victim in this life process going on all around him that he has no control over. The movie asserts the truth in this at the start--he has tried to get work for a year as an ex- con, and social stigma stands in his way, leading to the jewel heist as an act of desperation. Furthermore, Mature is more principled than anyone ought to be, refusing to rat until he's been lied to by those he was protecting with silence. In a way, he gradually rises to a kind of folk hero status, in this very private, limited way, affecting only a handful of people, but doing so flawlessly.
Of course, it's Richard Widmark (in his very first film) who makes Mature practically a saint by being an unrepenting psychopath. The ten seconds it takes him to grab an old woman in a wheelchair, tie her up with an electric cord, and roll her screaming down the stairs is justifiably famous. Even though you know it's coming, it's about as heartless as anything in the movies, and played with economy, not dwelling on it, just punching you in the stomach. And watch him contort and fall in the last scene where he's shot in the street. This is the kind of thing the French auteur directors drooled over.
The photography is interesting for being ultimately conservative and superb at the same time. The camera is almost always level, framed with geometric precision, using light to create depth and complexity, sometimes shooting through windows or screens to add to the visual complexity, but rarely or never using strong angles off of vertical, or zeroing in on a face or hand so closely it fills the screen. These are all carefully executed shots, and scenes, and it is editing with equal precision. In all, the movie is a model not of daring and pizazz, but of adhering to the rules so perceptively, it sparkles. It's possible this was partly done to heighten its documentary realism, but Norbert Brodine is a conservative shooter at heart, so between him and Hathaway's workingman's approach, we would expect what we see here.
The movie is not a great social commentary despite the suggestion at the beginning that it might explore the causes of crime, and despite its use of actual New York State locations for all the shooting. But it doesn't want to be. It leverages well worn clichés because that's the quickest way to get us to relate to the man trying to get his life straight. That's all its about, really. Even in the voice-over by his eventual new wife, heard at the beginning and end, we hear a tale about one man only.
Three Reasons for Greatness: Plot, Polish, and Victor Mature
1) Victor Mature gives a impassioned, inward-looking performance to die for. 2) The story is gripping, and reasonable, and pits the lone man trying to go right against all the forces that all of us face: the system, the bad guys, and our own mistakes. 3) The studio system is at its technical best and supports the story with polished, professional acting, camera-work, direction, and sound.
In the general sense, these are actually pretty basic things that every movie might have: a lead we can identify with, a great story, and well made. Kiss of Death lacks only those rare qualities of originality in some other noir films, like we see in Sunset Boulevard or Detour, to keep it from the stratosphere. But it's better than most by far.
Mature, throughout, is not portrayed as a criminal type, "One of those mugs that don't belong to human society," as Donlevy says as Assistant D.A. Bianco has good handwriting, he has composure, he loves his kids. And a great small reinforcement happens when he goes to the orphanage to see them and the nun looks at him and his two cop guards and asks, "Which one of you gentlemen is Mr. Bianco." The camera lets us pan over them and we see them as the same.
And he mildly says, "That's me." Mature is really amazing in a role that could have been hammed up or stiffened up. His large, meaty presence is presented with a kind of innocence, as if he is the victim in this life process going on all around him that he has no control over. The movie asserts the truth in this at the start--he has tried to get work for a year as an ex- con, and social stigma stands in his way, leading to the jewel heist as an act of desperation. Furthermore, Mature is more principled than anyone ought to be, refusing to rat until he's been lied to by those he was protecting with silence. In a way, he gradually rises to a kind of folk hero status, in this very private, limited way, affecting only a handful of people, but doing so flawlessly.
Of course, it's Richard Widmark (in his very first film) who makes Mature practically a saint by being an unrepenting psychopath. The ten seconds it takes him to grab an old woman in a wheelchair, tie her up with an electric cord, and roll her screaming down the stairs is justifiably famous. Even though you know it's coming, it's about as heartless as anything in the movies, and played with economy, not dwelling on it, just punching you in the stomach. And watch him contort and fall in the last scene where he's shot in the street. This is the kind of thing the French auteur directors drooled over.
The photography is interesting for being ultimately conservative and superb at the same time. The camera is almost always level, framed with geometric precision, using light to create depth and complexity, sometimes shooting through windows or screens to add to the visual complexity, but rarely or never using strong angles off of vertical, or zeroing in on a face or hand so closely it fills the screen. These are all carefully executed shots, and scenes, and it is editing with equal precision. In all, the movie is a model not of daring and pizazz, but of adhering to the rules so perceptively, it sparkles. It's possible this was partly done to heighten its documentary realism, but Norbert Brodine is a conservative shooter at heart, so between him and Hathaway's workingman's approach, we would expect what we see here.
The movie is not a great social commentary despite the suggestion at the beginning that it might explore the causes of crime, and despite its use of actual New York State locations for all the shooting. But it doesn't want to be. It leverages well worn clichés because that's the quickest way to get us to relate to the man trying to get his life straight. That's all its about, really. Even in the voice-over by his eventual new wife, heard at the beginning and end, we hear a tale about one man only.