Patrick King wrote:
> Sure, OUT OF THE PAST, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS
TWICE,
> DOUBLE INDEMNITY, CASABLANCA, THE MALTESE FALCON
are
> better movies than KISS ME DEADLY, still not
many
> modern noir films come close to capturing KISS
ME
> DEADLY's essential persepctive even though
their
> stories may be better and their casts
more
> accomplished.
Debates over quality are never satisfactorily resolved, and
those are all fine films. Nonetheless, I will say that to my
taste, which runs to modernist complexity more than to
classicism, Kiss Me Deadly is the most brilliant film in the
list (with Out of the Past running it very, very close).
There has been much excellent writing on the film that spells
those modernist qualities out, but one could not do better as
a starting point than Jack Shadoian's essay in Dreams and
Dead Ends. "Clumsy" is one of the last words I would use;
rather it seems to me that Robert Aldrich and A.I. Bezzerides
are supremely confident in carrying out their artistic aims,
and this results in a panache that is extraordinary. The
ballsiness of the credits running backward, which Patrick
rightly notes, announces to the audience that this is not
going to be like any other film they have seen, and what of
it? Little wonder that some folks have compared Kiss Me
Deadly to Citizen Kane; a Wellesian bravura is in the film's
DNA.
Best, Mark
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