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"Kiss Me Deadly"

Richard Brody on Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955).

Released on 04/14/2014


[running footsteps]

[labored breathing]

[ominous music]

[distant car engine roars]

[Narrator] I'm Richard Brody, and this clip is

from Kiss Me Deadly, a 1955 film noir

directed by Robert Aldrich.

[screeching tires]

[woman breathing hard]

It's got one of the great cold openings

of movie history, with Chloris Leachman

playing Christina Bailey,

an escaped mental patient attempting

desperately to flag down a passing car

and ending up stuck in the sports car

of Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane's

famous detective, played by Ralph Meeker.

But almost immediately thereafter

Christina is killed, Mike barely survives

and when he gets out of the hospital

he undertakes an investigation

to find out what kind of plot

he's tangled up in.

If I catch you snooping around

with a gun in your hand I'll throw you in jail.

[Narrator] It turns out to be a federal case.

Mike realizes that he's in over his head,

but that doesn't stop him from pursuing things

to their quasi-apocalyptic end.

It's a classic atomic age movie,

where the MacGuffin, or great whatsit

as Mike's assistant Velda, played by

Maxine Cooper calls it, has to do with

the international arms race.

Whatever element of romance

the detectives of Raymond Chandler or

Dashiell Hammett may have offered

is virtually absent from Mickey Spillane's brainchild.

I suppose I could get some more

information about the doctor.

Do you want me to date him?

[Narrator] Mike and Velda specialize

in divorce entrapment.

There's nothing fine and nothing elegant

about his way of working.

And yet, or perhaps therefore

he's irresistible to the women around him.

[tense music]

There's something symphonic about

the scope of this movie.

Classical culture plays a peculiarly

large role in it.

From the poetry of Christina Rossetti

to the music of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony,

Brahms' First String Quartet,

a Chopin etude, and the singing of Enrico Caruso.

Va, va voom, ha ha, 3-D pow!

[Narrator] It's also a symphony of voices.

I didn't say I'd give it to you.

As a matter of fact, I don't recall saying anything.

[Narrator] The cast of character actors

assembled by Aldrich bring memorable,

seemingly high relief tones and inflections

to go with the peculiarities of their characters.

What's it worth to you to turn

your considerable talents back

to the gutter you crawled out of?

Name the price.

[Narrator] And the intense violence

and the nerve jangling tone of the move

suggests the vast stakes at play

at the heart of a small time crime story.

Aldrich is something of a poet of brutality.

Some of his scenes of horrific violence

ramp up their horror by implying the unspeakable.

[menacing music]

Others bluntly display violence and pain

in ways that seem shocking for 1955

and even for today.

[woman screams]

But the greatest horror of the film

is in its sheer disproportion.

The movie is one of the great and terrifying

reckonings with the new atomic age.

With the prospect of global annihilation

arising from the infinitesimal.

Manhattan project, Los Alamos, Trinity.

[Narrator] In this scene, Mike Hammer

slaps around a hapless desk clerk,

in order to get access to a locker.

He has no idea what he's looking for

diamonds, documents, cash,

but what turns up is the shock of a lifetime.

His, and pretty much everyone else's.

[eerie orchestral music]

[dissonant strings]

[muffled bangs]

[mysterious orchestral music]

It's hot.

[eerie music]

Hot sir?