037 - The Naked Kiss, 1964, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.

Monday, February 6, 2017

037 - The Naked Kiss, 1964, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.

Pulp.

This is the kind of movie where people talk to each other by grabbing them by the shoulders, shaking hard, and yelling in their faces at close range.

Or they just slap each other.

Or hit each other with hard objects.

Or shove wadded-up dirty money in people's mouths.

It opens with an explosion of angry violence.

The prostitute, dressed in her night set, is beating her pimp over the head with her purse.

They do not use the word pimp.  Later in the film she shouts out, "He was my taut!"  See if you can find the word taut in a slang dictionary.   We are in the hands of a street writer.

Her wig comes off.

She is bald!

Somehow this is disturbing.

And cinematically memorable.

We are looking through the lens of an early hand-held camera.  It is strapped to her.  We see her hitting him.  It is strapped to him.  We see her hitting him.

We find out later that he was cheating all his girls.  She found out and did something about it.  He had her head shaved to shame her.  She got a group of girls to leave him.  He put out word that they were to have their faces splashed with acid whenever they were found.  He found her.  Before he could hurt her, she beat him.

Cash flies everywhere.

He owes her $75.

She takes only what he owes her.  Or as she says, "what's coming to me!"

And stuffs it.

She leaves the rest.  And leaves.

With her wig on.

Who ever knew that putting on a wig could be an act of defiance?

She is putting on her helmet.  Preparing for battle.  Restoring herself.  Standing tall.

The credits roll across her face.

This is Sam Fuller.  He does not have time for establishing shots.  Just get to the point.

Constance Towers, the film's star, recalled, "He wanted it to be like a screaming headline."

Fuller himself said, "We are using the camera as a typewriter."

As a teenager he wrote for a tabloid in New York City.  This set the tone of his writing for life.

Before that he sold papers at age 12.  Back then you bought papers from the circulation desk.  "You could hear the presses.  The earth shook."

A funny thing happened on the way to the presses.

He met the foreman of the press room, the boss.  The foreman took him upstairs.  Or as he recalls it, "I entered Paradise."  It was The New York Evening Journal, "the biggest newspaper in the world."  He saw what he considered all of human history contained in one great room.

The man asked him his age.  He said 12.  The man said you had to be 14 to work in New York City.  He asked him his age again.  He said 14.  He got a job.  He started as a copy boy.

Ernest Hemingway began as a newspaper reporter.  It influenced his writing style.  He influenced the writing of the world.

Samuel Fuller had a similar upbringing.  He wrote for papers.  He wrote for tabloids.  He wrote for pulp magazines.  He liked a good shocker.

He once said, "If anything irritates anyone, even for a minute, I enjoy it."

Kelly, our girl, moves away.  She arrives by bus in a small town, Grantville, where she can start over, where she can be safe.

Shock Corridor, Fuller's previous film, which we saw yesterday, is playing at the movie theater where the bus drops her off.

A couple of men see her.  They take notice.  One is named Griff.  Yeah, this is pulp.  Griff says, "She's enough to make a bulldog bust its chain."  Griff busts his chain.  And follows her.

He sits down at the park bench next to her.  She is reading a book written by Fuller years ago.  (Yeah, he likes an inside reference.)  She is a travelling salesman.  She is selling champagne.  She shows him her bottles.  He wants a free sample.  She refuses to give it.  He says he is pretty good at popping a cork if the vintage is right.

They wake up in his room.  She is dressing.  He has placed a twenty-dollar bill on the table.  He says he is paying her ten.  She says she does not make change.

She knows he is a cop.  He is impressed that she guessed it.  He runs her out of town.  He has to keep the town clean.  But he recommends her to Candy's shop across the river.  She can be a Bon-Bon for Candy.

Wait.

Did we just say he is a police officer and he is running her out of town to keep the town clean?  After he just . . .

Yes.  This is Sam Fuller.  He writes about scandal, remember?

All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.

Maybe Shakespeare anticipated what the word player would come to mean.

He may be playing her, but she is sure about to play him.

She goes to Candy's shop.  (Yes, Fuller beat 50 Cent by 50 years.)  Candy is happy to have a new girl.  She invites her back to set her up.  Kelly beats Candy with her purse.

What?

Kelly's coming!  Protect yourself!

Instead of becoming a Bon-Bon, Kelly becomes a nurse for handicapped children.  She wants love.  She wants to love and to be loved.  She wants to heal.

Griff is angry.  How dare you become a nurse!  You are a prostitute!  You are not allowed to change professions!

Wasn't Griff trying to clean up the town?

Maybe Griff has his own ambitions.

Kelly enters into the dream world.  If you believe it, it can happen.  She takes the children into that world.  She dresses them as pirates.  She tells them stories.  They run and play.

A new man, Grant, will take her into that dream world.  He is the son of the family for whom the
town, Grantville, is named.  He will love her.  He will marry her.  Her life will be good.

Or as Towers sees it, "She found a man who loved her and offered her the life of her dreams."

She loves the poetry of Byron.  He will take her to see where Byron wrote.

She loves Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.  He will play it for her.

He quotes Baudelaire.  She asks if it is Goethe.  She pronounces it Goat-the.  She is self-taught.  "A sweetheart is a bottle of wine.  A wife is a wine bottle."  Grant is a real romantic.

Grant proposes to Kelly and she accepts.  When he goes to kiss her, she hesitates.  Something does not feel right.  Something smells wrong.  Something tastes wrong.

Something is wrong.

That is the "naked kiss."  Prostitutes also call it an "iron kiss."  It is a knowing, an intuition, an awareness that the person on the other end of those lips is not good.  Not good, that is, in ways that are above and beyond those of her regular customers.  In ways that are evil.

Is she right?

Or does she just have cold feet?

She will buy a beautiful wedding dress.  And she will take it to show him.  Even though Josephine, the dress maker, warns her that it is bad luck.

She will end up exchanging her purse for a hard telephone handle.

And will depend upon the kindness of others to help her.  But will she find them?

Constance Towers observed later that Kelly is the true character in the film, the character that carries the truth with her wherever she goes.  And she is in every scene.

After doing these two films with Samuel Fuller, Towers went on to Broadway, and she starred in Anastasia, The Sound of Music, and the revival of The King and I, with Yul Brynner.  The Village Voice had fun with it, publishing a full-page picture of her bald head in The Naked Kiss in comparison with Brynner's bald head, joking that she was going to give him a run for the King role.

Earlier in our blog we spoke of family support.  In 031 - Shadows (January 31), we talked about how John Cassavetes' father supported him when he told his father he wanted to be an actor.

Constance Towers' father supported her as well.  He was concerned that she was going to play a prostitute, and he did not want it to hurt her image or her career.  It took him three months to see the film when it came out.  When he saw it, he said, "You know, it's a good film.  And you're wonderful.  And I like it."

That is what artists need to hear from their loved ones.  If you are the father or parent or loved one of artists, let them know how much you believe in them.  Tell them.  Often.

The film features a song that Constance Towers introduced to Samuel Fuller.  After Shock Corridor they went on a trip to Panama.  On the flight, he watched her as she helped save a baby's life by giving it oxygen.  This gave him the idea of having Kelly become a nurse of handicapped children.  She also sang her song and he heard it and put it in the movie.

It was a French song called "Dear Father," and was sung by a boy to his father.  Constance had it translated to English and changed it to "Dear Mother," where the boy sang to his mother.  She sang it in her nightclub act. 

                              Show me where, Mommy dear, and here's what I will do
                              I will take the dear bluebird and give it to you

When Fuller heard it, he tweaked it for her to sing to the children in return, and it became "Little Child."

Constance and the children sang it live on set.  They did not go back and record it in the studio.  So the sound is authentic and human.

                               Dear, the bluebird's the love in your heart, pure and true
                               And I found it the day heaven blessed me with you.

Fuller said he would "like very much to contribute one-billionth of a percent of a record of the customs and habits, a diary, of the United States."

He has contributed several.