Kiss Of Death

Kiss of Death (1947)

Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: Henry Hathaway

Starring: Victor Mature, Richard Widmark, Coleen Gray, Brian Donlevy, Taylor Holmes

From: 20th Century Fox

Here is a film noir I watched at almost the literal last minute last night, and that was a wise decision. Read why below in my Letterboxd review: 

It had been a few months since a noir has been watched by me. Someone on a messageboard reminding me that this film was on TCM last night and as I had never seen it before... it was the most appropriate thing for me to see. One day I'll watch the 1995 remake where you see someone bench press a girl but I will presume that is not as good as this motion picture.

I don't want to give away too much about the plot but it's centered around Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), a crook who gets caught during a failed robbery and gets sent to the slammer because he won't rat out his friends. Things change and he changes his mind. Things end up complicated for him and he ends up dealing with a psychopath with the great name of Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark). An innocent dame (Coleen Gray, who just passed away a few months ago) is involved, as are the typical trappings of a film noir.

I now know why many people rate this highly. It's a quality noir for sure. You end up liking Bianco even though at first he acts like a punk. You find out that he has a family-including two young daughters-and he clearly loves them very much. There are entertaining tough guys throughout and the plot was always interesting to me. However, to be the true highlight was Widmark. This was actually his film debut and he hit a home run with his performance. Udo is quite crazed and he does a tremendous job bringing that to life with such thing as his maniacal laughter. I know that people have drawn parallels between that performance and Heath Ledger as The Joker and it is an understandable comparison. Widmark was actually a fan of The Joker in the Batman comics of the 40's. Anyway, Udo does a thing or two that made me go WOW as I was not expecting to see such things in a film of the time. I'll just say there are some incredibly harsh moments.

This movie is well-done and to list but an example of that, at times there are long stretches of silence (such as during the opening robbery, and it's used during other tension-filled scenes) and it's quite effective. I know that it won't be so long before I see another film noir.