Post by StevePulaski on Dec 13, 2016 23:03:05 GMT -5
Kiss of Death (1947)
Directed by: Henry Hathaway
Directed by: Henry Hathaway
Richard Widmark.
Rating: ★★★
There's a musicality to many film noir features, in both style and dialog, where much of the picture retains a certain lyrical quality about the accents and dialog, all of which often captured in the same or similar-sounding, dialect-potent drawl. For some, including myself to some degree, this can be hard to adjust to. Film noir relies heavily on characters and specific relationships, and sometimes, the characters aren't fleshed out individuals and generally look the same, making it hard to distinguish who is who in even the most competent noirs.
I fully recognize this as a personal issue, and while Kiss of Death does bear some of the typical shortcomings I find almost inherently embedded in the genre, this is a largely successful film that illustrates the style effectively but fills it with a lot interest on many other levels.
The film revolves around Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), who is arrested on Christmas Eve for robbing a jewelry store in New York City. He's thrown in prison, but persuaded by an attorney named Louis D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy) to rat out his partners in exchange for a lesser sentence. Nick refuses and is instead slapped with a twenty year sentence, leaving a wife and two young daughters on the outside of his new cell at Sing Sing. Three years after he's jailed, he discovers in the daily obituaries his wife has committed suicide due to financial reasons and his daughters were placed in an orphanage as a result.
An old babysitter informs Nick that his wife was raped by Pete Rizzo, one of his accomplices to the robbery that landed him in prison, which he winds up using as fuel to insist that D'Angelo get him out of prison on the condition that he help the police solve another case. Nick's lawyer, Earl Howser (Taylor Holmes), eventually double-crosses his client by getting the assistance of Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark), a psychopathic murderer who did time with Nick at one point, to kill him before he has any chance to exact revenge on Rizzo.
Despite the evident absence of an obvious femme fatale, there's no shortage of strong performances here. Victor Mature gives a new-named to the straight-laced, hard-boiled male protagonist here, going for a similar kind of conviction Henry Fonda did in 12 Angry Men in that he bears the same kind of mannered energy, yet every word here utters has a powerful bang to it. Mature works because director Henry Hathaway sets him up to do so, having his facial expressions and dialog command the screen whether he's given a monologue or a moment to bask in the glory of the screen.
But no performance here, nor in any other film noir I've personally seen, is quite like Richard Widmark's. In a contemporary sense, Widmark's character is like a blend of both Joe Pesci's worst, most evil moves in Casino and Goodfellas with the later interpretations of The Joker blossoming to create a sinister character. As blunt as his high-pitched voice, soul-piercing eyes, and maniacal laugh can be, Widmark's performance is actually nicely understated, given the time period as he finds a delicate balance between rage and urgency that's ultimately the key to his character's success.
Kiss of Death moves and tantalizes with mystery and film noir conventions, such as impressive focus on lighting and shadow (consider how conversations between both Nick and D'Angelo showcase their wall/floor shadow as if they're the characters involved in the scenario too). There's an impressive aura of subtlety and filmmaking craft here that lends itself to the strength and power of the genre, and it's a craft that even the sometimes dreary conventions of noir can't keep down. Kiss of Death's narrative and performances are simply too powerful to overshadow its muscle.
Starring: Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Richard Widmark, Taylor Holmes, and Coleen Gray. Directed by: Henry Hathaway.