Kiss of Death
1947
After James Cagney declined the lead, Victor Mature signed on to the film generally regarded as his best and he claimed was his favorite. In a brooding and yet sensitive performance, he plays a husband and father of two young girls who pulls off a jewel robbery on the 24th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. A tied-up employee manages to hit a button under a desk to alert the police as we watch Mature in a crowded elevator slowly descending the 24 stories. This scene, with all its tension, is right out of the film noir manual and I always get hyped up watching it.
He is nabbed and since he has hurt no one and didn't get away with the goods, the assistant district attorney, Brian Donlevy, decides to allow him to forego prison providing he rats on the guys who helped him but managed to get away. Mature declines and is sent to prison, shackled to Richard Widmark, an obvious sleaze without a conscience. Mature's only happiness, brief as it may be, is a visit from his daughters' babysitter, Coleen Gray, who has secretly fancied Mature.
While in prison Mature learns that his wife has committed suicide and his daughters are in an orphanage. That prompts him to seek out Donlevy with a change of heart... he will snitch so that he can be free to get his daughters.
The original deal has changed a bit and now involves a complication that brings Widmark back into the picture. Mature rats on Widmark for other crimes and is promised by Donlevy that Widmark's trial will result in his going to prison. Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way and the hoodlum is released, vowing revenge on Mature and his new wife (Gray) and the daughters. Mature, of course, goes after Widmark as well and as with so many crime capers, it's about which man is going to get the other first.
Widmark, making his movie debut, captured an Oscar nomination and the public's fascination. Director Henry Hathaway, making the third of four noirs in a row at his home studio, didn't want Widmark in the role and treated him rather shabbily when he was overruled by studio chieftain, Darryl Zanuck. They obviously made up because they made several more films together and Widmark was a pallbearer at Hathaway's funeral.
The actor will be forever remembered for his menacing laugh and for pushing Mildred Dunnock, tied in her wheelchair, down a flight of stairs. It is a scene considered so shocking that some foreign markets snipped it out of showings. It is a study of sadism and a bit gratuitous and could easily have been left out but it's noir at its ugly best. It undeniably provided Widmark with a auspicious start to his long movie career.
An Oscar nomination also went to the writing. Based on Eleazar Lipsky's book, it was snatched up by Fox and given to prolific screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer to fashion into a screenplay. It's likely you have seen a number of films of these writers. As a noir the film is suspenseful, carefully paced, loaded with those specific camera angels and framing, great lighting and shadows, pessimism, and dark, wet streets. All that seems to be missing from the great noir catalog is a bad girl. Gray is not only decidedly a good girl but is the film's only soft place. She also narrates, another noir staple.
By the way, look that poster over again, noticing the names of Patricia Morison and Robert Keith. It was obviously an early poster because neither was in the film. Their couple of scenes, separate from one another, were cut from the final print.
The Fiend Who Walked the West
1958
So, ok, you're thinking I've lost it. Whatinthehell does a fine 40's film noir have to do with strange title like The Fiend Who Walked the West? I don't blame you but guess what? Fiend is indeed a remake of Kiss. Studios did this all the time... recycling their popular films and changing genres along the way. Fox was in the habit of doing it more than twice with the same basic stories. And not only is this incarnation a western but a horror-western!
If Widmark had a career-defining role in the original, acting hopeful Robert Evans, in the same part, found it to be career-destroying. Decent roles in The Man of a Thousand Faces, The Sun Also Rises and The Best of Everything seemed to sweeten the pie for Evans at Fox but then came Fiend. His performance was so over the top and the film so ridiculously absurd that there was nowhere to go except down... as an actor. Of course, he became someone to reckon with at Paramount some years later.
He followed Widmark with a sneer but his skin was inexplicably green, he was bug-eyed and leered over everyone in his unfortunate path. Hugh O'Brian, trying to become a leading man in the Mature role, couldn't keep this ludicrous mess from sinking.
Kiss of Death
1995
Obviously this was better than Fiend but nowhere near what the original was. The noir feel was absent with action replacing it. It was loosely based on the original with several key points and roles reinvented.
David Caruso left NYPD Blue to become a big movie star with this film, although it didn't quite work out for him. His performance in the hero's role was so lethargic and was generally panned. Nicolas Cage has invested the Widmark with the sheer intensity (if not some weirdness) that he became noted for. Samuel L. Jackson, himself no stranger to intensity, is an apprehensive cop, a smaller role in the original. The size of that role was flipped with the part of the assistant D.A., played here by Stanley Tucci.
I thought the movie lacked focus and common sense. I scratched my head at some of what I was seeing, especially the ending which made me wonder if it had turned into a comedy. The writer should have been put in a wheelchair and pushed down the stairs.
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A good 80's movie
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