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.
