Tockinit not horrible nor great

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

mark.waltz In the criminal world, a rat is a dirty word, and even in law enforcement, those who squeal on the criminals the police are desperate to catch are not always trusted or even liked. Paroled thief Victor Mature finds out that the best way to be a rat is to disappear, yet even that is not easy with the word of mouth spreading after he testifies against psychopathic murderer Richard Widmark, a trial that results in Widmark being acquitted because of his powerful defense. Widmark lies in waiting, like a hungry cat, waiting to pounce, playing with him like real felines do with their prey.This exciting New York City set film noir utilizes the beautiful Elmer Bernstein music "Street Scene" to unfold its story, showing the viewer what lead Mature to being imprisoned, his decisions to rat out fellow prisoner Widmark, and the impact it has on his family. Widmark, the most unforgettable film noir villain, possesses an evil laugh, which when it appears usually mean that a gun or some other method of murder will be appearing as well. This laugh becomes truly menacing in particular when he confronts the wheel-chair bound mother of another rat as to her son's whereabouts.Mature's character, while a crook, is certainly worthy of sympathy. His character witnessed the police killing of his father as a child, was forced by poverty into a life of crime, and his latest imprisonment was as a result of not being able to find a job because of his ex-con status. Then, there's his unseen wife, whom we find out can't take the pressures of poverty, the former baby sitter (Coleen Gray) who becomes Mature's new love interest, and the threat that Widmark imposes on them when his acquittal makes him a free man. This is where the suspense comes in, and a sequence where the sleepless Mature tiptoes around his house with concern for his two daughter's safety is like the ticking of the clock in "High Noon". The ending is unique in the sense that it leaves the viewer with a sense of both hope and justice.

chaos-rampant Sometimes you have to reflect a bit on the world of the film. Most of the time you just know and the encounter is all brute force.This is a solid crime drama, one of the most bleak (forget the wistful ending, you just know it was meddled with for the Code). A straight- up crook has to turn stoolie to be re-united with his two daughters, in doing so gets a new family, a new lease of life, but the plot backfires late in the night and a psychotic mobster will be looking for him and his daughters.Richard Widmark in his screen debut is just delicious to watch, a seething mass of barely contained violence and twitching nerves. He was so good he spawned real-life imitators in the mob.But this also goes for a film noir vibe, at least by token of the period it was made. It gets shadows right and has that gritty sense of place - actual New York streets - but is a bit off on certain characteristics I deem as quite defining of a good noir.The engine per the noir model, is that our man wanted to go straight but the world refused him, refused him because he had a record, all this is narrated to us on the way to a job that goes wrong, and he had a record it is mused because of a certain childhood scene with his no-good father. So the tracks were already laid-out for him long ago and he's merely being pushed along by learned instinct - you may note this as fate.Ideally in a film noir, dark impulse - usually personified in the femme fatale - is so overwhelming, so clouds perception, that reality itself begins to feel like it's being rewritten into a kind of nightmare. Incidental to this are the dreamlike perturbations in the world of the film, the frequently-met trope of a story being invented, a fiction in place of the real thing, and the illusion of fate, all of them key noir elements.The woman here is pure as the driven snow, perhaps this small detail exemplifies all the difference. The impulse is to do the right thing, our man serving justice.But we still have the solid crime drama and two memorable performers in the leads.

blanche-2 Victor Mature had no illusions about his acting; when he was rejected for membership to a golf club because he was an actor, he said, "I'm no actor, and I've got 65 movies to prove it." However unpretentious he was, when he was cast in the right role, he came off well, as he does here in the noir "Kiss of Death." Mature plays Nick Bianco, a con who becomes a stool pigeon for the D.A. (Brian Donlevy) so that he can get a parole and retrieve his kids from an orphanage. He marries a friend of his late wife's (Coleen Gray) and uses another name so that his kids won't be tainted by his old criminal life. It all goes well until he has to testify in court against Tommy Udo. Then his life and that of his family are in grave danger."Kiss of Death" is notable for being the auspicious debut of Richard Widmark, and few actors have had such a powerful introduction to an audience. As the sadistic Tommy Udo, Widmark's raw laugh and smirk are chill-inducing. His famous scene - maybe the most famous scene of his career, as well as being a famous scene, period - occurs when he throws an old woman in her wheelchair down a flight of stairs. And laughs. A fantastic performance.The beautiful Coleen Gray plays Nettie, Nick's wife. Despite her looks and good acting, Gray never achieved big stardom, though she had some excellent roles. I wonder if she just wouldn't play ball with Zanuck. Now 89, she is an attractive woman who continues to make public appearances, usually at screenings of the film "Nightmare Alley." Here she's perfect as a loving, worried woman. She also narrates.Mature gives a solid performance as Nick -- he was really in his métier here and in films like "I Wake Up Screaming," though he graduated (or was demoted) to beefcake roles in period pictures later on. He had the physique but he wasn't a great actor and somehow, it was more apparent in those movies.I feel very privileged to have met and spoken with Coleen Gray and to have heard the remarkable Richard Widmark speak in person, so I have an affection for this film. Even if I didn't, it's still good and well worth seeing.

secondtake Kiss of Death (1947)Three Reasons for Greatness: Plot, Polish, and Victor Mature1) Victor Mature gives a impassioned, inward-looking performance to die for. 2) The story is gripping, and reasonable, and pits the lone man trying to go right against all the forces that all of us face: the system, the bad guys, and our own mistakes. 3) The studio system is at its technical best and supports the story with polished, professional acting, camera-work, direction, and sound.In the general sense, these are actually pretty basic things that every movie might have: a lead we can identify with, a great story, and well made. Kiss of Death lacks only those rare qualities of originality in some other noir films, like we see in Sunset Boulevard or Detour, to keep it from the stratosphere. But it's better than most by far.Mature, throughout, is not portrayed as a criminal type, "One of those mugs that don't belong to human society," as Donlevy says as Assistant D.A. Bianco has good handwriting, he has composure, he loves his kids. And a great small reinforcement happens when he goes to the orphanage to see them and the nun looks at him and his two cop guards and asks, "Which one of you gentlemen is Mr. Bianco." The camera lets us pan over them and we see them as the same. And he mildly says, "That's me." Mature is really amazing in a role that could have been hammed up or stiffened up. His large, meaty presence is presented with a kind of innocence, as if he is the victim in this life process going on all around him that he has no control over. The movie asserts the truth in this at the start--he has tried to get work for a year as an ex- con, and social stigma stands in his way, leading to the jewel heist as an act of desperation. Furthermore, Mature is more principled than anyone ought to be, refusing to rat until he's been lied to by those he was protecting with silence. In a way, he gradually rises to a kind of folk hero status, in this very private, limited way, affecting only a handful of people, but doing so flawlessly.Of course, it's Richard Widmark (in his very first film) who makes Mature practically a saint by being an unrepenting psychopath. The ten seconds it takes him to grab an old woman in a wheelchair, tie her up with an electric cord, and roll her screaming down the stairs is justifiably famous. Even though you know it's coming, it's about as heartless as anything in the movies, and played with economy, not dwelling on it, just punching you in the stomach. And watch him contort and fall in the last scene where he's shot in the street. This is the kind of thing the French auteur directors drooled over.The photography is interesting for being ultimately conservative and superb at the same time. The camera is almost always level, framed with geometric precision, using light to create depth and complexity, sometimes shooting through windows or screens to add to the visual complexity, but rarely or never using strong angles off of vertical, or zeroing in on a face or hand so closely it fills the screen. These are all carefully executed shots, and scenes, and it is editing with equal precision. In all, the movie is a model not of daring and pizazz, but of adhering to the rules so perceptively, it sparkles. It's possible this was partly done to heighten its documentary realism, but Norbert Brodine is a conservative shooter at heart, so between him and Hathaway's workingman's approach, we would expect what we see here.The movie is not a great social commentary despite the suggestion at the beginning that it might explore the causes of crime, and despite its use of actual New York State locations for all the shooting. But it doesn't want to be. It leverages well worn clichés because that's the quickest way to get us to relate to the man trying to get his life straight. That's all its about, really. Even in the voice-over by his eventual new wife, heard at the beginning and end, we hear a tale about one man only.