Killer's Kiss (No Rating)
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As "edited, photographed and directed by Stanley Kubrick" (per the credits), this 1955 study of an obsessive protagonist gives early evidence of its maker's controlling interest in being arty above all else. Delivering cliched film noir voiceovers about the woe that befalls those who take life too seriously (thus anticipating 40 years of Kubrick characters, if not the eventually hermitic director himself), the hero is a dimwitted New York prizefighter (Jamie Smith) who falls in the first round for an enigmatic femme fatale (Irene Kane). But what appears to matter most to the filmmaker is his seemingly unmotivated crosscutting between the soon-to-be-lovers; his doc-like method of capturing both Broadway and the boxing ring; a long, non-sequitur scene of a woman's ballet performance (huh?!); and, most brilliant and pretentious of all, a nightmarish tracking shot through the city streets, foreshadowing 2001's "Starchild" trip and those icy Steadicam maneuvers through the labyrinthine Overlook Hotel in The Shining. While the narrative is DOA, both the director's die-hard fans and his detractors will find plenty here to support their arguments. Indeed, such an auteur was Stanley Kubrick that even a relatively devolved B movie like Killer's Kiss at least appears entirely his. (Rob Nelson)
Review by Rob Nelson
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