A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #18: Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss.

Sam Fuller is widely regarded as a very mas­cu­line film­maker; his works asso­ci­ated with vio­lence, bravado, exploita­tion, prim­i­tive­ness and vul­gar­ity. And while those asso­ci­a­tions are cor­rect, the mas­cu­line label is mis­placed. A film like The Naked Kiss illus­trates Fuller’s claim to focus on undi­luted emo­tion, emphat­i­cally ungen­dered. The char­ac­ter Kelly is cen­tral to the story in this film, and she essen­tially plays the role of the arche­typal female. Maybe in Wicca [some­thing I’m only tan­gen­tially famil­iar with] she would be the embod­i­ment of the God­dess. Another way to look at it would be to com­bine all of the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Greek god­desses into her form. She’s by turns wan­ton, venge­ful, moth­erly, sis­terly, house­wifely. She is every­thing that any­one has ever thought about a woman. This type of embod­i­ment trans­lates eas­ily into a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Kelly as power. She is what the film is about, and her uncon­scious inabil­ity to be pigeon­holed by other char­ac­ters is indica­tive of the “moral tract” that Michael Dare men­tions in his Cri­te­rion essay.

Despite this read­ing, the film has moments of weak­ness in its por­trayal of Kelly. Her pros­ti­tu­tion is equated as a sex­ual per­ver­sion akin to pedophilia. It is obvi­ous that Kelly isn’t a sex­ual deviant, but there is a brief moment that gives the film its name when she says she can tell when a man is a per­vert by the way his kiss tastes. A naked kiss, pros­ti­tutes call it. This sort of sixth sense is noth­ing but hokey. Even in the 1960s I sus­pect. Despite and because of Kelly’s mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, she’s the least acces­si­ble char­ac­ter in the film. Illim­itable. It helps that the set­ting and other char­ac­ters are so purely one-​dimensional. Grantville could be Leave it to Beaver’s May­field, except it is even more idyllic.

Of course, the lurid plot is exactly right for exploita­tion cin­ema: pros­ti­tutes, pedophiles, small town Amer­ica. Date­line could learn a lot from Sam Fuller. Kelly, though a hooker with a heart of gold, has an extremely vio­lent streak that appears when she must defend virtue and jus­tice; an odd trait for a pros­ti­tute, but fully in keep­ing with the com­plex and imper­fect char­ac­ters that are trade­marks of a Fuller film. There is a scene where she shoves money into the mouth of a cathouse madam, and the fact that the madam looks like Kelly might in 15 years is star­tling. The fram­ing of each shot through­out the film is as tight and claus­tro­pho­bic as pos­si­ble, not until the end do we get a sense of free­dom and release, as Kelly leaves town to make her way else­where. The Naked Kiss isn’t Fuller’s best film, but it is cer­tainly a stand­out in com­par­i­son to his other works and the schol­ar­ship that has been done in rela­tion to his defin­ing auteur char­ac­ter­is­tics. If you’re a fan of any­thing Fuller though, you’ll enjoy this film.

Cri­te­rion Essay by Michael Dare.
Cri­te­rion Con­trap­tion review.
San Fran­cisco Gate arti­cle.
Dan Schnei­der essay.
YouTube Clips: Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3.