Naked Kiss

Year: 1964

Grade: B

Country: USA

Director: Fuller

Review

like femme fatale, if this film was made in a vacuum it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. that is, so much of what made this film interesting for me was comparing it to the films to which is similar, but ultimately unlike. femme fatale is a film noir that twists the entire noir logic and philosophy on its head, somewhat similar to eastwood’s unforgiven. naked kiss is similar to pulp and noir films, but draws a different conclusion than those films. it’s the story of a woman who is a prostitute and finds herself in a small town where she decides to abandon her old lifestyle. unfortunately her flight to suburbia takes her no further from the dirty and sordid lifestyle she was trying to escape. like sirk before him, fuller paints a picture of twisted underbelly found just under the surface. i found fuller’s methods of illuminating the depravity slightly less subtle and artistic than sirk’s, but they were just as effective. naked kiss is different from sirk’s films primarily because the style of naked kiss was much more towards that of a pulp film, as opposed to a melodrama. it has a grittier look, starts off much harsher and uses black and white photography instead of the lush color used in something like ‘all that heaven allows.’ this film gets as dark and depraved as anything i’ve seen sirk do, though the pitch was less gradual. the lead actress had a good performance, the best of the film, but it wasn’t great. holding the film back were a few corny aspects which seemed to stem from fuller’s optimism in spite of the depravity of the world. unlike kurosawa in rashomon, however, fuller was unable to vent his optimism in as a realistic, naturalistic or inspiring way. it’s unfortunate, too, because there certainly were makings of a better picture here, he was just unable to pull it off as well as i would have liked. p.s. great use of music within the film. edit 9-22/06: spillane’s writing style probably had more to do with the harsher style than fuller’s direction.