American Film of the 50s- Kiss Me Deadly, by Aaron Pinkston
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Through the first two weeks of the series we were already subjected to great film masterpieces, and there will be many more in the coming weeks (see: next week and the greatest film of all times, or so they say), but there might not be a more quintessential film of the 1950s than Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly. When I was a college student, I took an English class on the 1950s — it was mostly a sociological look at the decade through literature, but there was one film screened, and that film was Kiss Me Deadly. Of all the films that could have been shown to give young people an idea about a time when their parents may not have been born yet, this is the one that was hand-selected. There’s good reason for that.First and foremost, Kiss Me Deadly is a major representative of one of the most important film movements of the period, the film noir. Classical film noir came around in the 1940s (you could even argue that its roots started to grow with the gangster films of the 1930s), but the most interesting work was happening during the 50s. Part of this is attributed to major movements in literature, where authors like Mickey Spillane (who wrote the novel for which this film came) and Chester Himes were becoming incredibly popular. Great directors began gravitating to genre filmmaking, such as Samuel Fuller (to be seen later in the series), Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray and Alfred Hitchcock — lending legitimacy to film noir as an artform. Kiss Me Deadly is not just a great example of the filmmaking style, but perhaps its best example. The film centers around a low-level private investigator, Mike Hammer, who travels through the seedy underbelly of urban America, trying to solve the “great whatsit.” Every noir element is found here, from the femme fatale, the great contrasts in light and dark through beautiful black-and-white photography, kinetic editing, and moral ambiguities. It’s wild, aggressive pulp, but also beautifully shot, grime and all.Beyond being merely an artistic representation of its time, Kiss Me Deadly wonderfully tackles the political upheaval of the 1950s — though it’s not a political film in its outer plot, the subtextual level clearly marks it. The film has something to say about consumerism, a strong growing trait of the decade. When I wrote about Touch of Evil a few weeks back, I noted that this period say the boom of the suburbs, which is related. Though Kiss Me Deadly is obviously a film about the city, there is a mentality present that has become linked with the wealth in the suburbs, where people began to identify themselves through their objects. The American Dream quickly shifted from having a place of one’s own, to a place with all the extra amenities — a fully-stocked kitchen with all the new accessories, a television in the living room, and a car in the driveway. The characters in this film’s world are characterized by what they have and don’t have, especially the automobile. One character’s dream in life is to own a car like Mike Hammer’s. The automobile also becomes a vehicle (pardon the pun) of death, luring characters greed or trapping them. Away from cars, we see other characters’ wealth identified through their houses and swimming pools (another product of the suburbs), and newfangled gadgets like the answering machine.The consumerism in Kiss Me Deadly signifies a loss of values for the important stuff. With the rise of consumerism, people began to work just to satisfy their need to get a bigger car, a better refrigerator, more accessories. Though Mike Hammer’s initial dive into the film’s mystery is to figure out who tried to kill him and why, he begins to get wrapped up in chasing money — usually known for small-time divorce cases, this seems to be an opportunity for “something big” with a nice payday to follow. Ultimately, when people lose sight of the important things and are working only for the money, real purpose is lost and nihilism spreads — a mood that is expertly captured in this film, with equal parts wacky and violent.The film’s central character of Mike Hammer is an interesting model of 1950s masculinity and this idea of a consumerist culture. Ralph Meeker certainly plays a cool, dangerous type, but he has the look of the prototypical 50s American male — put a letterman’s jacket on him and he could be the All-American quarterback on campus. He’s tall, lean, clean-cut, with strong features and wears the iconic grey suit of the time period. This classic look plays in wonderful contrast to the cynical nature and violent things we see Hammer doing on screen. It also gives him an air of masculine authority that may have had something to do with the decade — this is a bit of a half-baked idea that maybe someone can fill out in the comments. Hammer isn’t a cop and he never gives any identification, but people seem to let him do whatever he wants. There are multiple times where he bursts on a scene and someone asks “who are you” — a question he never answers. Because of his status as a man, and one that looks so much of his time, he has this imprinted authority that other characters have no choice but to obey.The film is also notable for its take on the other gender. It has a similar air of misogyny that we saw in The Searchers, but at the other end of the spectrum — instead of helpless women tied down to men, we see fiercely independent women who use their sexuality as weapons. There are three major female characters in Kiss Me Deadly: the victim, the love interest, and the femme fatale. The latter of the three women, Lily Carver, is one of the prototypical characters for the genre — a woman as dangerous as she is beautiful. As we find out just how dangerous she is, she is likened to some of history and folklore’s most famous femme fatales, Pandora, Lot’s wife and Medusa. All three women in Kiss Me Deadly are all sexual objects, having different degrees of sexual relationships with Mike Hammer, and they certainly aren’t the stagnant type — they can be conniving cheaters in their own right. Strangely, in this way, there is a feminist argument that can be made. One of the three women, in the opening scenes of the film, even delivers some feminist theory by saying (sarcastically): “Ah, woman, the incomplete sex. And what does she need to complete her? One man, wonderful man!” This tone is something we saw more prevalent in the 1960s, but the roots of this wave of feminism grows out of the 1950s culture that saw women taking care of the homes and the children in their wonderful suburban lives. While the popular imagines and nostalgia of the time remembered women being docile homemakers, Kiss Me Deadly shows the ideologies that would become more commonplace during the next decade.But now for the most interesting decade definer shown in the film, the plot element which separates the film even from its source material. If you haven’t seen Kiss Me Deadly and don’t want to have the mystery solved, you can stop reading now. Through most of the film, we don’t have a clue as to what Mike Hammer is chasing down — though it must be something big. Once he finally makes a connection to Christina’s last words “Remember Me,” he is able to unlock (literally) the mystery at the heart of the film and of the decade. You could make an argument that the most significant cultural trend of the 1950s was the ever-present fear of all-out nuclear war. From the creation of bomb shelters to the hysterical educational films, nuclear fear reached many cultural and artistic levels. The presence of a nuclear threat links Kiss Me Deadly with another popular genre of the decade, the science fiction film, which became almost entirely about the effects of nuclear war. After the threat is uncovered in the last few scenes, the tone almost completely flips to something more in the realm of the science fiction horror film.In many crime noirs and thrillers of the period, the MacGuffin was a key element — Kiss Me Deadly’s use of the device is interesting compared to films like The Maltese Falcon or the countless other examples. As said earlier, through most of the film, we don’t really know what Hammer is hunting for, and as the MacGuffin would indicate, it doesn’t really matter. With the MacGuffin, the specific thing isn’t as important as the plot that it dictates. The nuclear device in Kiss Me Deadly, though, becomes a game-changer — once Hammer and the audience realize what he’s stumbled upon, nothing else really matters. Hammer even says something to the effect of “I had no idea,” an indication that the usual ho-hum object is much more dangerous and important than he could imagine. Knowing that this element was specifically changed from drugs in the Mickey Spillane novel heighten this fact, and make the film much more culturally relevant to its time.The way the film treats the nuclear device is difficult to analyze. First of all, it never actually states what this thing is — we only see that it is a glowing danger contained in a wooden box and the disastrous effects it has. Poetically, the closest the film gets to telling us this horror is are through three phrases: the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, and Trinity — described as simple letters jumbled together that take on a bigger meaning when put together, much like the presence of this nuclear threat in the context of the film. Though menacing, you can’t exactly call its place in the film scientifically accurate. I’m not sure if this was a statement the film was making, or simply a part of the era the film was made, but the simplistic naivety the film has toward this mysterious glow is akin to the “duck and cover” mentality of the period.Kiss Me Deadly might never be considered one of Hollywood’s greatest films, but there is no denying it’s place as a great piece of genre filmmaking and as perhaps the greatest representation of the American 1950s. It’s a film that is messy in its themes, style and politics, brilliantly mirror the darkest underbelly of its time. In a movement identified by dark settings and tones, there has never been a film darker than Kiss Me Deadly.
Through the first two weeks of the series we were already subjected to great film masterpieces, and there will be many more in the coming weeks (see: next week and the greatest film of all times, or so they say), but there might not be a more quintessential film of the 1950s than Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly. When I was a college student, I took an English class on the 1950s — it was mostly a sociological look at the decade through literature, but there was one film screened, and that film was Kiss Me Deadly. Of all the films that could have been shown to give young people an idea about a time when their parents may not have been born yet, this is the one that was hand-selected. There’s good reason for that.First and foremost, Kiss Me Deadly is a major representative of one of the most important film movements of the period, the film noir. Classical film noir came around in the 1940s (you could even argue that its roots started to grow with the gangster films of the 1930s), but the most interesting work was happening during the 50s. Part of this is attributed to major movements in literature, where authors like Mickey Spillane (who wrote the novel for which this film came) and Chester Himes were becoming incredibly popular. Great directors began gravitating to genre filmmaking, such as Samuel Fuller (to be seen later in the series), Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray and Alfred Hitchcock — lending legitimacy to film noir as an artform. Kiss Me Deadly is not just a great example of the filmmaking style, but perhaps its best example. The film centers around a low-level private investigator, Mike Hammer, who travels through the seedy underbelly of urban America, trying to solve the “great whatsit.” Every noir element is found here, from the femme fatale, the great contrasts in light and dark through beautiful black-and-white photography, kinetic editing, and moral ambiguities. It’s wild, aggressive pulp, but also beautifully shot, grime and all.Beyond being merely an artistic representation of its time, Kiss Me Deadly wonderfully tackles the political upheaval of the 1950s — though it’s not a political film in its outer plot, the subtextual level clearly marks it. The film has something to say about consumerism, a strong growing trait of the decade. When I wrote about Touch of Evil a few weeks back, I noted that this period say the boom of the suburbs, which is related. Though Kiss Me Deadly is obviously a film about the city, there is a mentality present that has become linked with the wealth in the suburbs, where people began to identify themselves through their objects. The American Dream quickly shifted from having a place of one’s own, to a place with all the extra amenities — a fully-stocked kitchen with all the new accessories, a television in the living room, and a car in the driveway. The characters in this film’s world are characterized by what they have and don’t have, especially the automobile. One character’s dream in life is to own a car like Mike Hammer’s. The automobile also becomes a vehicle (pardon the pun) of death, luring characters greed or trapping them. Away from cars, we see other characters’ wealth identified through their houses and swimming pools (another product of the suburbs), and newfangled gadgets like the answering machine.The consumerism in Kiss Me Deadly signifies a loss of values for the important stuff. With the rise of consumerism, people began to work just to satisfy their need to get a bigger car, a better refrigerator, more accessories. Though Mike Hammer’s initial dive into the film’s mystery is to figure out who tried to kill him and why, he begins to get wrapped up in chasing money — usually known for small-time divorce cases, this seems to be an opportunity for “something big” with a nice payday to follow. Ultimately, when people lose sight of the important things and are working only for the money, real purpose is lost and nihilism spreads — a mood that is expertly captured in this film, with equal parts wacky and violent.The film’s central character of Mike Hammer is an interesting model of 1950s masculinity and this idea of a consumerist culture. Ralph Meeker certainly plays a cool, dangerous type, but he has the look of the prototypical 50s American male — put a letterman’s jacket on him and he could be the All-American quarterback on campus. He’s tall, lean, clean-cut, with strong features and wears the iconic grey suit of the time period. This classic look plays in wonderful contrast to the cynical nature and violent things we see Hammer doing on screen. It also gives him an air of masculine authority that may have had something to do with the decade — this is a bit of a half-baked idea that maybe someone can fill out in the comments. Hammer isn’t a cop and he never gives any identification, but people seem to let him do whatever he wants. There are multiple times where he bursts on a scene and someone asks “who are you” — a question he never answers. Because of his status as a man, and one that looks so much of his time, he has this imprinted authority that other characters have no choice but to obey.The film is also notable for its take on the other gender. It has a similar air of misogyny that we saw in The Searchers, but at the other end of the spectrum — instead of helpless women tied down to men, we see fiercely independent women who use their sexuality as weapons. There are three major female characters in Kiss Me Deadly: the victim, the love interest, and the femme fatale. The latter of the three women, Lily Carver, is one of the prototypical characters for the genre — a woman as dangerous as she is beautiful. As we find out just how dangerous she is, she is likened to some of history and folklore’s most famous femme fatales, Pandora, Lot’s wife and Medusa. All three women in Kiss Me Deadly are all sexual objects, having different degrees of sexual relationships with Mike Hammer, and they certainly aren’t the stagnant type — they can be conniving cheaters in their own right. Strangely, in this way, there is a feminist argument that can be made. One of the three women, in the opening scenes of the film, even delivers some feminist theory by saying (sarcastically): “Ah, woman, the incomplete sex. And what does she need to complete her? One man, wonderful man!” This tone is something we saw more prevalent in the 1960s, but the roots of this wave of feminism grows out of the 1950s culture that saw women taking care of the homes and the children in their wonderful suburban lives. While the popular imagines and nostalgia of the time remembered women being docile homemakers, Kiss Me Deadly shows the ideologies that would become more commonplace during the next decade.But now for the most interesting decade definer shown in the film, the plot element which separates the film even from its source material. If you haven’t seen Kiss Me Deadly and don’t want to have the mystery solved, you can stop reading now. Through most of the film, we don’t have a clue as to what Mike Hammer is chasing down — though it must be something big. Once he finally makes a connection to Christina’s last words “Remember Me,” he is able to unlock (literally) the mystery at the heart of the film and of the decade. You could make an argument that the most significant cultural trend of the 1950s was the ever-present fear of all-out nuclear war. From the creation of bomb shelters to the hysterical educational films, nuclear fear reached many cultural and artistic levels. The presence of a nuclear threat links Kiss Me Deadly with another popular genre of the decade, the science fiction film, which became almost entirely about the effects of nuclear war. After the threat is uncovered in the last few scenes, the tone almost completely flips to something more in the realm of the science fiction horror film.In many crime noirs and thrillers of the period, the MacGuffin was a key element — Kiss Me Deadly’s use of the device is interesting compared to films like The Maltese Falcon or the countless other examples. As said earlier, through most of the film, we don’t really know what Hammer is hunting for, and as the MacGuffin would indicate, it doesn’t really matter. With the MacGuffin, the specific thing isn’t as important as the plot that it dictates. The nuclear device in Kiss Me Deadly, though, becomes a game-changer — once Hammer and the audience realize what he’s stumbled upon, nothing else really matters. Hammer even says something to the effect of “I had no idea,” an indication that the usual ho-hum object is much more dangerous and important than he could imagine. Knowing that this element was specifically changed from drugs in the Mickey Spillane novel heighten this fact, and make the film much more culturally relevant to its time.The way the film treats the nuclear device is difficult to analyze. First of all, it never actually states what this thing is — we only see that it is a glowing danger contained in a wooden box and the disastrous effects it has. Poetically, the closest the film gets to telling us this horror is are through three phrases: the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, and Trinity — described as simple letters jumbled together that take on a bigger meaning when put together, much like the presence of this nuclear threat in the context of the film. Though menacing, you can’t exactly call its place in the film scientifically accurate. I’m not sure if this was a statement the film was making, or simply a part of the era the film was made, but the simplistic naivety the film has toward this mysterious glow is akin to the “duck and cover” mentality of the period.Kiss Me Deadly might never be considered one of Hollywood’s greatest films, but there is no denying it’s place as a great piece of genre filmmaking and as perhaps the greatest representation of the American 1950s. It’s a film that is messy in its themes, style and politics, brilliantly mirror the darkest underbelly of its time. In a movement identified by dark settings and tones, there has never been a film darker than Kiss Me Deadly.
