Wonderland Burlesque: Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: It's In His Kiss

Thursday, August 06, 2026

Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: It's In His Kiss - Part X

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies:

It's In His Kiss

Part X

It's in his kiss.

Isn't that where it all begins?

A caress of the lips. A deep longing. Sharing a single breath?

On the silver screen such a kiss can be captured forever, frozen in time.

Or so these films would have us believe.

So, let's kiss and tell and spill the beans on these everlasting smacks, smooches, and snogs.

Yes, things can get pretty heated.

Chapstick exists for a reason, you know!

Grab a seat on the aisle.

Popcorn at the ready.

Pucker up and roll film!

- uptonking from Wonderland Burlesque

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Kisses

(1922)

Betty Estabrook, daughter of a financier, meets Bill Bailey while returning home on a train and offers him one of her homemade candy kisses. Bill persuades her to dispense some candy at a charity bazaar, which she does with great success, but, unhappily, he discovers that Betty is engaged to Norman Maynard, son of a manufacturer of sweets. Betty's father dies as a result of financial complications, and determined to reimburse the creditors, she sells her house and all her possessions, causing Maynard to break off the engagement. Bill and Bessie Neldon join forces with Betty to manufacture candy, a venture that becomes so successful that Maynard begins to suffer from the competition and sows seeds of discontent among their workers. Bill thwarts the plan, but Betty sells the B-Kissed Candy Co. to Maynard for a sizable sum, which enables her and Bill to become engaged.

Alice Lake

This silent comedy was directed by Maxwell Karger and stars Alice Lake, Harry Myers and Edward Connelly.

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The Kiss

(1929)

Irene is unhappily married to an older businessman but very much in love with a handsome young lawyer who doesn't want to add to her unhappiness by ruining her marriage. She is terrified of her husband's jealousy and anger, so they decide to stop seeing each other. Instead, she bides her time with Pierre, a young friend of the family who walks their dogs and is in puppy love with Irene. When Pierre is about to leave for college, he begs her for a goodbye kiss. She agrees, and who should walk in while it is happening, but her ailing and financially distraught husband.

Based on a short story by George M. Saville, this American silent drama was directed by Jacques Feyder and stars Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, and Lew Ayres.

During casting, Garbo recommended Nils Asther for the role as her lover André. Asther had been born in Denmark but, like Garbo, had grown up in Sweden, an association with the actress that only enhanced his reputation as "the male Greta Garbo" in the film industry and among movie fans. In addition, he had already co-starred with her in two of MGM's recent film successes and was still under contract with the studio. Nevertheless, despite those apparent advantages held by Asther and Garbo's strong support for him to join the cast, the part was assigned to Conrad Nagel.

MGM's last non-talking picture, as well as Greta Garbo's and Conrad Nagel's final silent film. Of the greats, Garbo and Charlie Chaplin were the lone holdouts when it came to making talking pictures.

First credited film for Lew Ayres. His next film, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), would make him a star.

This is not a completely silent film; a synchronized score and sound-effects recording was done by Movietone a sound-on-film technology. The film featured a theme song entitled Romeo and Juliet (Love Theme) which was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It also featured repeated replays of the Liebestodt theme from Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde whenever the action of the film became particularly dramatic. Love's First Kiss with music by William Axt & David Mendoza and lyrics by Raymond Klages was a song published to promote the picture.

MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons recycled some of the art deco furniture he designed for Joan Crawford's Our Modern Maidens, a production filmed a few months earlier. Gibbons' bold, high-fashion sets in the film were intended to emphasize the French style and serve as "vital elements" in the production, especially in a non-dialog offering like The Kiss, which had to compete at its release with many other motion pictures that featured the new "exciting" element of recorded dialog.

Released less than 4 months after the disastrous crash of the American stock market in 1929, The Kiss was not expected to do well financially given the times. Yet, it surprised studio executives by making a significant profit and becoming Garbo's second most successful picture, ranking only behind Flesh and the Devil with John Gilbert, which had been released three years earlier. The Kiss grossed $518,000 in the United States and $387,000 elsewhere, bringing its worldwide gross to $905,000; the profit for the film was $448,000.

Variety said of the film, "The Kiss, with an unusual taste exhibited in casting and direction, is entertainment of the holding kind. And it is one of Miss Garbo's best, without stretching the elastic of kindness. Though this is silent it may be stronger that way than with dialog. Few actresses could weather the series of close-ups required of Miss Garbo in this one. In each she registers an individual perfection. The series proves her biggest asset is her naturalness."

The New York Times referred to the presence of The Kiss among all the new talking pictures in late 1929 as "Golden silence" and a demonstration of Fedyer's "consummate artistry". "Miss Garbo once again reveals her extraordinary talent for screen acting, and under M. Fedyer's guidance she is if anything more impressive than she has been in other films." While The Film Daily described Garbo as "very alluring" and "exotic", but found the "sophisticated drama" lacking, especially the film's conclusion, saying, "The subject matter is too tragic, and the ending not the type that the average fan looks for."

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

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Kiss

(1964)

Close-ups of couples kissing for three and a half minutes each.

This American underground film was directed by Andy Warhol and features Barbara Rubin, Gerard Malanga, Johnny Dodd, Ed Sanders, Mark Lancaster, Baby Jane Holzer, and Robert Indiana.

Kiss runs 50 minutes, and was one of the first experimental films Warhol made at The Factory in New York City.

In July 1964, Kiss was shown with its predecessor Sleep at the Park Square Cinema in Boston.

In addition, in 1964, Kiss shown as small TV-sized projections at the entrance lobby to the third New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center. For this installation La Monte Young provided a loud minimalist drone soundtrack.

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The Kiss

(1981)

AKA: O Beijo No Asfalto (The Kiss On The Asphalt)

When a pedestrian is hit by a bus, simple clerk Arandir runs and kisses the body in a gesture of sympathy and unconditional pure love. The opportunist scum photographer Amado Pinheiro witnesses the scene and sees the opportunity to sell newspapers. Together, with the despicable and abusive chief of police Cunha, they accuse Arandir of homosexuality. Further, they say that the victim was his lover and Arandir killed him out of jealousy. Meanwhile, his father-in-law Aprígio who does not like him goes to the suburban village to tell his daughters, Arandir's beloved wife Selminha and her sister Dália, that Arandir is at the police station. The next morning, when the newspapers are distributed, Arandir is in the headline and later is humiliated in his work and in the village where his family lives. While Amado and Cunha manipulate the event and witnesses, common bigoted people believe that Arandir is gay and a killer, with tragic consequences.

Based on the play of the same name by Nelson Rodrigues, this Brazilian drama was directed by Bruno Baretto and stars Tarcisio Meira, Ney Latorraca, Lidia Brondi, Christiane Torloni, Daniel Filho and Oswaldo Loureiro.

This is the second time around for a film adaptation of Nelson Rodrigues' play. The first was 1965's melodramatic O Beijo. It would be remade yet again in 2018 as O Beijo No Asfalto. The play was also been adapted as a musical in 2022.

Tarcísio Meira and Ney Latorraca would reunite on film as immortal enemies in O Beijo do Vampiro (2002).

Though made and released in 1981, this film was not shown in the US until 1990.

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube (search for O Beijo No Asfalto).

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The Kiss
(1988)

In their childhood, Felice and Hilary were never particularly close, each sent away to live with different guardians. Felice found herself under the care of an aunt with a peculiar and sinister lineage, a legacy sealed with a chilling kiss. Fast forward to adulthood, and Felice has blossomed into a stunning globe-trotting model, while Hilary enjoys a blissful life with her husband Jack and their daughter, Amy. Then, out of nowhere, Felice reaches out to Hilary, revealing a dark necessity to transfer her cursed bloodline to another relative. Tragically, Hilary meets her end shortly after that fateful conversation, and the malevolent Felice cunningly weaves her way into the family, plotting to bestow her wicked heritage upon the unsuspecting Amy.

This Canadian/American dark fantasy horror drama was directed by Pen Densham and stars Joanna Pacula, Meredith Salenger and Mimi Kuzyk.

Director Pen Densham described it as "somewhere between The Exorcist and Poltergeist."

The screenplay was written by Stephen Volk, who had previously written Gothic (1986) for Ken Russell, and would follow The Kiss with William Friedkin's The Guardian (1990). Its special effects team was made up of Charles Carter, and Chris Walas, who supplied the special effects on Gremlins (1984) and David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986).

Shot in seven weeks, this co-production between the United States and Canada was filmed in Montreal in 1987, and released by TriStar Pictures in the fall of 1988. It was a box-office failure, grossing under 2 Million in Canada and the US with a budget of 6 Million and received mixed reviews from critics.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "rich in disgusting special effects and poor in every other regard", and remarked on its unimpressive performances. Time Out called the film a "daft and derivative possession pic", noting Mimi Kuzyk as providing "the only shred of credible humanity". LA Weekly described the film as a "still, regurgitated mess of genre stew". Variety criticized the film for lacking development in its supernatural plot, adding, "if the setups were hokier, they might have been funny." Roger Hurlburt of the Sun Sentinel noted: "The Kiss has a few moments, but too much talk and slow, oh-so-slow sequences leading up to the action, pad the film terribly. There was potential here - not for a great horror film, understand - but a nifty little potboiler", though he conceded the film features "above-average direction".

Leonard Maltin gave the film a mildly favorable review, calling it an "occasionally scary horror film that builds up to but downplays the sexual implications of its Cat People–style story of a family curse passed down to each generation by a woman-to-woman kiss." The Los Angeles Times's Kevin Thomas also compared the film to Cat People, praising it as "smart, fast, and sassy, as much fun as it is scary in its shock-cut grisliness... the film makers are adept in playing the most bizarre and grisly happenings against an atmosphere of the utmost normality." Michael Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram deemed the film "an eerie, often inept but strangely rewarding oddity... director Pen Densham succeeds brilliantly at rendering his audience vulnerable." Peter Travers, writing for People, summarized: "Densham renders each mishap with graphic glee. Mimi Kuzyk, from TV’s Hill Street Blues, provides welcome comic relief as a neighbor who teaches Salenger about glow-in-the-dark condoms, Marlene Dietrich movies and how to electrocute a demon cat. But the grotesque soon drowns out the giggles, making The Kiss easy to kiss off." While Film critic Harry M. Benshoff has claimed the film to be an allegory of the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s.