Kiss of Death (1947)

August 27, 1947, release date

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Screenplay by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer

Based on a story by Eleazar Lipsky

Music by David Buttolph

Edited by J. Watson Webb, Jr.

Cinematography by Norbert Brodine

Victor Mature as Nick Bianco

Brian Donlevy as Assistant District Attorney Louis D’Angelo

Coleen Gray as Nettie

Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo

Mildred Dunnock as Mrs. Rizzo

Taylor Holmes as Attorney Earl Howser

Howard Smith as the prison warden

Karl Malden as Sergeant William Cullen

Anthony Ross as Big Eddie Williams

Millard Mitchell as Detective Shelby

J. Scott Smart as Skeets

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

(This blog post about Kiss of Death contains spoilers.)

Kiss of Death has one of the most sympathetic noir protagonists, Nick Bianco, in all of film noir. In fact, Bianco reminds me of Joe Norson in Side Street. (See my blog post about Side Street dated August 17, 2016.) I couldn’t bear to watch Side Street because I couldn’t stand to see how much serious trouble Joe got himself into; I put off seeing Kiss of Death, too, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Richard Widmark, as Tommy Udo, push Mrs. Rizzo in her wheelchair down a flight of stairs. This scene made Widmark famous, and I had heard a lot about it before I finally saw the film. The scene where Mrs. Rizzo goes down the stairs is disturbing, even now, but Kiss of Death is really Nick Bianco’s story.

It can be argued that Tommy Udo, by comparison with Nick Bianco, makes it that much easier for audiences to root for Nick Bianco. But even before he meets Udo, it is almost impossible not to like Nick. Coleen Gray’s character Nettie provides the narration in voice-over at the opening of the film. Viewers don’t know at first who she is, but it’s clear that she has a lot of sympathy for Nick. It’s Christmas Eve, and she explains that Nick Bianco has only one way to “shop” for his kids—and that’s to steal. The film opens with a jewel heist involving Nick and three accomplices (Pete Rizzo never makes an appearance on-screen, but he is the one who is driving the getaway car.) One of Nick’s first memories, Nettie says, is seeing his father killed by a police officer. And because he cannot forget that tragedy, he is haunted by his past, a familiar characteristic for many film noir protagonists. Nettie lays the groundwork, from the beginning, for the sympathy that audiences come to feel for Nick.

The scene in the prison when Nick reads his first wife’s obituary in the newspaper, in the library reading room, seems to imply that anyone would feel sympathy for his plight. Nick grieves for his wife in the only way that he can given his current situation: He stands up from the desk where he was reading the newspaper and moves to the window, and then he slumps against a reading rack. He is alone and dwarfed by the shot, with him facing a large window and with the tables and chairs in the prison library taking up the foreground.

Nettie finally appears in the film, preceded by more of her voice-over narration, when she visits Nick in prison: Now viewers know that she and the narrator are one and the same. Until this point in the film, the identity of the voice-over narrator is unclear and audiences don’t know her connection to Nick. She and his two children by his first wife gives Nick a reason to get out of prison. He finally decides to be an informant for the district attorney, Louis D’Angelo. D’Angelo had offered a deal to Nick when he was first imprisoned, but Nick was steadfast in his determination not to squeal on his associates. It’s a loyalty that he takes very seriously because the jewel heist wasn’t the first time that he served his full sentence rather than squeal. Now, however, his children are living without their mother, and they will live like orphans if he remains in prison. Nick finally changes his mind: His family comes first, no matter what.

I don’t know if Victor Mature, who plays Nick Bianco, liked children, but his performance as the father of the two children in Kiss of Death is utterly convincing. He kisses and hugs them when he is granted a visit at the orphanage. At this point, he is still in prison and the visit is courtesy of D’Angelo in the district attorney’s office. D’Angelo also builds sympathy for himself with his interactions with Nick and the visits he arranges between Nick and his children in exchange for Nick’s information. When he is finally paroled, Nick is visibly heartbroken when he must send them away with their stepmother Nettie to protect them from Tommy Udo’s vengeance.

Before too long, both Nick Bianco and Louis D’Angelo are on the same side of the law after all, with all its flaws and ambiguous compromises:

• Bianco: “Your side of the fence is almost as dirty as mine.”

• D’Angelo: “With one big difference. We hurt bad people, not good ones.”

Nick Bianco doesn’t look entirely reassured in this scene. Nick is a flawed character; he makes many mistakes, most of them outside the law. But D’Angelo also makes many mistakes, and some of them have dire consequences. In fact, he loses his case against Tommy Udo, which was based on information provided by Nick Bianco. He is responsible for putting Nick and the Bianco family in danger.

The scene when D’Angelo comes to check on Nick while Nick waits for Tommy Udo is suspenseful even today. It is staged and photographed to build doubt in the viewer’s mind: Is it Udo coming after Nick? It is also the scene where Bianco tells D’Angleo that he knows the police can’t help him or prevent Tommy Udo from coming after him. Udo can’t come after Nick’s wife and children only because Nick has sent them away, not because the police can protect them.

Kiss of Death, like Side Street, is a film noir with a sympathetic main character, someone that audiences can identify with because of his love for his family. The scenes with Nettie and his children are heartwarming, which is amazing considering that this film noir also features Richard Widmark in his landmark role of Tommy Udo, a character that exudes barely suppressed violence every time he is on-screen. But the Bianco family prevails, and I’m sorry that I put off seeing the film for so long.