The first time that I saw The Naked Kiss, I had a hard time seeing it as noir. The cinematography doesn’t use any shadowy lighting to emphasize noir aspects of the narrative or the characters. The sets are so stylized, and the small-town setting of the film is such an idealized version of suburban life.
But The Naked Kiss really is a noir. The main character is a lot like other noir protagonists who are haunted by a past that they cannot escape. The noir protagonist, Kelly, in The Naked Kiss just happens to be a woman. Kelly is living on the fringes of society as a result of her profession: She is a prostitute. She would like to leave this part of her life behind and keep it in the past. Try as she might, however, her past continues to haunt her.
The story also includes frank discussions about out-of-wedlock pregnancy, abortion (which was illegal in 1964 and didn’t become legal nationwide in the United States until Roe v. Wade in 1973), recruitment of young women for prostitution, and child sexual abuse. There might not be any shadowy lighting, but small-town Grantville has plenty of crime going on every day.
The film starts with bebop jazz on the soundtrack, which accentuates the alternating close-ups of a woman (Kelly) fighting with man (it is later revealed that he is her pimp, Farlande). She hits him again and again with his shoe, and he doesn’t do much to fight back. But then he tells Kelly that he is drunk. It’s not clear if she was the one to get him as drunk as he is, but he does manage to pull a wig off her head to reveal that she is completely bald. Kelly gets the upper hand and takes the money that he owes her—$75.00—and nothing more, even though he has much more in his wallet.
The opening credits appear over a close-up of Kelly facing the camera lens as though it were a mirror. She replaces her wig and reapplies her makeup. After the credits, she leaves the man’s apartment. Then man finally gets up off the floor and collects the remainder of his money. He leaves the bills on a desk with a desk calendar that reads July 4, 1961.
The film then jumps two years ahead, with a shot of a bus entering a small town and passing underneath a banner going from one edge of a street to another. The banner reads, in part, “August 12, 1969 Fashion Show for Handicapped Children.” Kelly gets off the bus in the small town, which is called Grantville. Detective Griff spots her and is attracted to her immediately. Before he can act on his impulse, he is interrupted briefly by some family members, including his niece, Bunny, a school-age child. After Bunny and her family leave, Griff follows Kelly to a park and sits next to her on a bench. They strike up a conversation, and when he finds out that she is a salesperson selling champagne in a new territory, he wants a free sample. She isn’t willing to give him a free sample, but she is willing to sleep with him, and money does change hands the next morning.
Kelly discovers that Griff is a Korean War veteran and that he fought at Pork Chop Hill. He has a framed newspaper article with a headline reading “Grant Saves Griff in Korea; Wounded.” Grant’s great great grandfather founded Grantville, hence the town’s name.
When Kelly leaves Griff’s place, she finds a room for rent from Madame Josephine, a seamstress. Madame Josephine is quite taken with Kelly, although she knows nothing about her and nothing about her past. She seems to be taken in by a pretty face. Madame Josephine tells Kelly that J. L. Grant’s name is synonymous with charity and that he built the Grantville Orthopaedic Medical Center in town. Kelly decides to go there for a job. Before she ever meets J. L. Grant, Kelly, and viewers, too, know that he is the town’s leading citizen and one held in high esteem.
Griff threatens to expose Kelly’s past to the people who hired her at the hospital. She begs him not to because she is determined to put the past behind her. He apparently keeps quiet about what he knows because the film cuts to Kelly working with the children who are patients at the hospital and doing a great job. The head nurse, Mac, has nothing but glowing things to say about her.
Kelly finally meets J. L. Grant when Mac brings her to party that he is hosting. Griff is at the party, and he seems angry about the attention that Grant shows to Kelly. Grant has just returned from a trip overseas, and he has gifts for everyone, including Kelly, even though he has never met her before. Is Griff jealous? Is he outraged that she is hiding her past prostitution? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Griff is allowed to visit prostitutes: He paid Kelly for sex and he visits Candy’s prostitutes in the next town. In the 1960s, he is a man who is also allowed to be morally outraged when anything about prostitution hits too close to home, in other words, becomes mixed up with anything to do with Grantville.
(This article about The Naked Kiss contains all the spoilers.)
Kelly and J. L. Grant share a love of poetry and classical music. Grant seems like Kelly’s soul mate, a dream come true for her. When they first kiss, however, Kelly pushes Grant away. She seems disturbed by something (her discomfort is explained later in the film). Kelly eventually tells Grant the truth about her past because she sees that they are becoming more and more emotionally involved. Grant’s response is to ask Kelly to marry him. Kelly wants to think about it. She doesn’t understand why Grant is so forgiving, why he would want to marry her. But then she decides not to question it. She finally accepts the chance to settle down and live a normal life.
Kelly goes to Grant’s house to surprise him and to show him her wedding dress and veil. When she arrives, she gets quite a shock: She catches him abusing Griff’s niece Bunny. This scene shocked me, too, the first time that I saw the film because it was so unexpected. Grant seems too good to be true, but child sex abuse was never even hinted at in the plot before this point.
Bunny leaves, and when Grant realizes that Kelly is in the house and saw what he was doing, he tells her:
“Now you know why I could never marry a normal woman. That’s why I love you. You understand my sickness. You’ve been conditioned to people like me. You live in my world, and it will be an exciting world. My darling, our . . . our marriage will be a paradise because we’re both abnormal.”
It is a chilling declaration, and exactly the opposite of what Kelly wants for herself. Kelly’s response is to hit Grant over the head with a telephone handset, which kills him. Apparently in a state of shock, she sits woodenly in a nearby chair and puts her wedding dress and veil back in their box.
When Kelly is questioned by Griff, viewers discover that she called the police herself. She tells Griff an interesting detail, one that links back to her and Grant’s first kiss:
“Once before, a man’s kiss tasted like that. He was put away in a psycho ward. Oh, I got the same taste the first time Grant kissed me. It was a— What we call a—a ‘naked kiss.’ It’s the sign of a pervert.”
Now viewers know why Kelly was disturbed by Grant’s first kiss. Did she ignore her gut instinct because she so desperately wanted a new life, a so-called normal life, that was far removed from her life of prostitution? Was it impossible for her to believe that Grant could be anything other than the image everyone in Grantville had of him? Did Kelly ignore her hunch because it was just that—a hunch? This point in the narrative is never really explained.
Griff doesn’t believe Kelly’s story about Grant molesting children at first, but he agrees to try to find the girl that Kelly saw in Grant’s house. Griff slowly comes around to seeing Kelly and the young girl as victims, but he hounds Kelly before he makes this transformation. It clarifies why it is so difficult for Kelly to put her life of prostitution in the past and keep it there. Griff finds it hard to trust Kelly and anything that she says or claims. It’s easier to blame her and not have to face the truth of what she alleges: that Grant is and was criminal all along; that Griff’s niece Bunny is a victim, too; that Kelly could be exonerated for Grant’s murder because she was acting out of extreme emotional duress and defense of a child.
Griff finally does come around. The citizens of Grantville do, too, although they probably didn’t need as much convincing, and not nearly as much evidence, as Griff did. Many of them are Kelly’s good friends and coworkers. Before Kelly discovers Grant with Bunny, she keeps a coworker Buff away from a life of prostitution by warning about the consequences of working that kind of life. Kelly also helps another coworker, a nurse named Dusty, get an abortion by giving her some money. But once Kelly’s secret is out in the open, and in spite of all the good that she has done in Grantville, she is forced to leave town and start all over again somewhere else. The implication is that her past will haunt her forever and that she will never be able to leave it behind.
But the film also points out that suburbia, perhaps the American postwar dream in general, is nothing like it seems. Maybe it’s only a façade, with crime and corruption right around the corner of every suburban street. Or it’s populated by those who want to use women for their own gain. The Naked Kiss has plenty of examples:
◊ Griff would like to expose Kelly’s secret about her past, although he has no qualms about using her for sex and visiting prostitutes outside town.
◊ J. L. Grant’s cultured life in a small town and his generosity create a façade for his own set of crimes.
◊ Kelly’s pimp, Farlunde, attempts to keep her money and keep her in a life of prostitution. When she dares to say no, he orders a mob hit on her.
◊ Candy is a madame for the bordello outside town. She is interested in keeping the women working for her, and she doesn’t tolerate any interference from Kelly. When she could clear Kelly’s name, she lies instead, out of revenge.
All of these characters use women—and children—for various reasons, one being financial gain. But that’s not the only reason that The Naked Kiss is an uncomfortable film to watch. Another is that it captures Kelly’s feeling of entrapment really well. Kelly is a sympathetic character. She seems too good to be true at first, too. In her case, however, she offers real help to her friends and others who need her. But she is still forced to leave Grantville, a town where she has found a job working at the hospital, a job in which she excels, and a place where she has made many friends. In the short time that she lived in Grantville, she did a lot of good for several people.
There is one plus for Kelly in this story: Her connections in town and a plea of self-defense, which is backed up by Griff’s evidence, have cleared her of murder charges. But she will always have to keep moving to stay ahead of her past.
October 29, 1964, release date • Directed by Samuel Fuller • Screenplay by Samuel Fuller • Music by Paul Dunlap • Edited by Jerome Thomas • Cinematography by Stanley Cortez
Constance Towers as Kelly • Anthony Eisley as Griff • Michael Dante as J. L. Grant • Virginia Grey as Candy • Betty Bronson as Madame Josephine, the seamstress • Monte Mansfield as Farlunde, the pimp
Hospital Staff Patsy Kelly as Mac, the head nurse • Marie Devereux as Buff • Karen Conrad as Dusty • Linda Francis as Rembrandt • Bill Sampson as Jerry • Sheila Mintz as the receptionist • Patricia Gayle as the nurse The Children Jean-Michel Michenaud as Kip • George Spell as Tim • Christopher Barry as Peanuts • Patty Robinson as Angel Face • Betty Robinson as Bunny
The Bonbons Breena Howard as Redhead • Sally Mills as Marshmallow • Edy Williams as Hatrack
Distributed by Allied Artists • Produced by F & F Productions, Inc.
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