Best Film Kisses

Best and Most Memorable
Film Kisses of All Time
in Cinematic History

Part 10

Film Title	Description of Kiss in Movie Scene	Example
Touch of Evil (1958) Explosive Kiss	The film opened with its most famous sequence - an audacious, incredible, breathtaking, three-minute, uninterrupted crane tracking shot following a convertible (with a timed explosive placed in its trunk) through a squalid Mexican border town. The camera descended and picked up another cheerful couple, Ramon Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston), a handsome, Mexico City narcotics investigator (of the Pan-American Narcotics Commission) with his voluptuous blonde, honeymooning American bride Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh), who were walking down the street and into the US (this was the first time they had crossed the border together), and exchanging intimacies. As the inter-racial newlyweds kissed, the sound of the explosion of the detonated car overlapped on the soundtrack, and they turned their faces toward the blast - the "very bad" incident violently disrupted and fragmented their relationship for the remainder of the film
Vertigo (1958) "Stay With Me" Kisses	In their first major kissing sequence, obsessed Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) and cool, suicidal blonde Madeleine (Kim Novak) embraced by water's edge in a perfect synthesis of both death and erotic romance within their relationship; hugging him, Madeleine begged Scottie: "I'm not mad. I don't want to die. There's someone within me, and she says I must die. Oh, Scottie, don't let me go"; he responded protectively: "I'm here. I've got you"; she replied: "I'm so afraid. (They clung to each other and kissed passionately as the turbulent ocean waves melodramatically crashed on the rocks behind them.) Don't leave me. Stay with me"; Scottie responded: "All the time." He vowed to protect her from harm (and thereby possess and identify with her, even if it meant personal annihilation due to her death wishes) - the climactic scene faded to black
Vertigo (1958) Loving, Deceptive Kisses	In the livery stable on the mission grounds, Scottie kissed Madeleine again and told her of his love ("I love you, Madeleine"), and she hurriedly confessed her own love for him ("I love you, too. It's too late"), and then became frantic, telling him: "There's something I must do"; ignoring his attempts to comfort her with repeated kisses and promises: "No one possesses you. You're safe with me," she again told him: "It's too late" and ran off across the courtyard toward the mission's church and bell tower; he caught up to her on the village green and held her tightly, telling her: "We're in love. That's all that counts," but she explained how she had to go through with things as planned; she declared her love for him once again: "You believe I love you?...And if you lose me, then you'll know I, I loved you and I wanted to go on loving you... Let me go into the church - alone"; after one more kiss, she turned, looked up, and rushed into the church. He glanced up at the bell tower for an instant, and then decided to chase after her. She started to climb up the bell tower's crude, winding and rickety wooden staircase; in his pursuit, Scottie felt acute acrophobia and vertigo. At the top, there was a shrieking scream and a gray-clothed body resembling Madeleine's was seen through a side tower window apparently falling to her death far below. Scottie looked down through the tower opening and saw a still body lying dead on the adjacent rooftop below.
Vertigo (1958) Transformational Kisses	In another memorable sequence, when brunette 'twin' Judy (also Kim Novak) had finally made the full transformation into Scottie's image of Madeleine, the camera focused on Scottie pacing around before she emerged from the bathroom - his hopeful eyes were filled with wonder and emotion in an unforgettable image, as he saw the reborn reincarnation of his lost love. The ghostly figure appeared bathed in the eerie green-tinged neon light reflected from the hotel sign outside the window - her metaphysical, spiritual figure assumed solid shape as she moved out of the ghostly green light and crossed the floor to him, to surrender to him. They embraced and kissed passionately, as the camera panned and dizzyingly swirled completely around them, causing the walls of the room to appear to turn and change into the livery stable setting where he had been with Madeleine, before changing back to the greenish-light of the bedroom
North By Northwest (1959) Train Berth Kisses	This film had a long series of seduction scenes during a cross-crountry train ride between a mysterious, ambiguous, baffling woman named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) and a handsome ad executive named Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) - unattached and on the make; when he wasn't avoiding capture, she encouraged him in a playful manner to kiss her. She surrendered entirely to him (although he ominously held her head in his hands), even though he was basically a stranger to her.
Pillow Talk (1959) More Than a "Perfect Gentleman" Kiss	As part of the seduction ploy of his shared party-line neighbor, songwriter-playboy Brad Allen (Rock Hudson), using the alias of "Rex Stetson" - a wealthy and naive tall Texan, teased conservative-minded, interior decorator Jan Morrow (Doris Day) with the idea that he might be romantically-uninterested in her - or even gay - an ironic fact due to Hudson's later revelation about his real-life; after meeting her and requesting a dinner/dance date on the phone, he told her: "I get a nice warm feeling bein' near you, Ma'am. It's like, like bein' round a potbellied stove on a frosty mornin'"; after a number of dates, she challenged him to demonstrate his romantic interest and go beyond being a "perfect gentleman" all the time: "Well, being such a perfect gentleman and all, it's-it's not very flattering"; he replied, in character: "Oh, well, ma'am, I wouldn't want to do anything that might spoil our friendship"; astonished, she asked: "Is that all it is with us, friendship?" - he replied: "Ma'am, that's a direct question. I think it deserves a direct answer" - finally, he delivered a kiss that was sensational; Jan was so flustered by the kiss that she had to excuse herself in the club: "I'd better go to the powder moon, I mean room. Fix my lipstick"; afterwards, he asked her to go away with him to Connecticut for the weekend, where he also declared his down-home love for her in front of a roaring fire with a bucket of chilled alcohol: "Remember when I said that being near you was like being near a potbellied stove on a frosty morning?...I was wrong...You're more like a forest fire, completely out of control"
Rio Bravo (1959) "It's Better When Two People Do It" Kisses	In this Howard Hawks' traditional western, young pretty star Angie Dickinson starred as gambler's widow Feathers, an attractive, independent and alluring stagecoach passenger who was told to leave the town of Rio Bravo by Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) because she was suspected of cheating in cards; when accused, she dared him to search her clothing: "Well, Sheriff, you've got a job to do. Where do you intend to begin?... You've got to prove I have those cards...I think you're embarrassed..."; she persisted in verbally dueling with him whenever she saw him during their antagonistic relationship; she refused to leave town on the stagecoach when Chance ordered her, telling him: "That's what I'd do if I were the kind of girl that you think I am"; later, when he admitted that things might be different between them if he wasn't involved in "this mess" with a jailed murderer, she told him: "That's all I wanted to hear" and kissed him; she followed it with a second more passionate kiss: "I'm glad we tried it a second time. It's better when two people do it"; he gradually broke down and accepted her love, and they kissed freely as the film progressed
Some Like It Hot (1959) Impotence-Busting Seduction Kisses	In a memorable, racy seduction scene (dripping with sexual innuendo and imagery, and involving champagne and soft music) on the yacht of a rich oilman, luscious and voluptuous Sugar Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) was assuringly told by the impersonating Joe (Tony Curtis), a broke saxophone player in reality, that she had nothing to worry about being completely alone with him there - he had a complex about women and couldn't get excited about them, due to a traumatic childhood tragedy; the supposedly-impotent millionaire explained that he couldn't fall in love anymore - he was basically frigid because Mother Nature threw him "a dirty curve" - so she sympathetically accepted the challenge to be the aggressor after he successfully convinced her to help him overcome his insensitivity and mental block toward sex; throwing herself on top of him, she planted a kiss after asking: "Have you ever tried American girls?" Another attempt was made when he reclined on the sofa and she asked: "I may not be Dr. Freud or a Mayo brother, or one of those French upstairs girls, but could I take another crack at it?" Joe replied: "All right, if you insist" (They kissed deeply accompanied by a phallic image - his foot rose at the end of the sofa behind her); after she turned the lights down, she kept offering torrid kisses and sips of champagne: "You're not giving yourself a chance. Don't fight it. Re-lax"; he replied that it wasn't working: "Like smoking without inhaling" - and she quipped: "So inhale!"; finally, he admitted: "I've got a funny sensation in my toes, like someone was barbecuing them over a slow flame" - followed by her added quip and more hot kissing: "Let's throw another log on the fire"; when he encouraged her: "I think you're on the right track", she noticed that his glasses were beginning to steam up
Some Like It Hot (1959) Puckered Kiss for the Audience	During the stage show at the Florida hotel, Sugar sang: "I Wanna Be Loved By You," wearing a sheer, see-through gown as she performed in the nightclub lounge; the spotlight tantalizingly teased the viewer with shadows as it moved over her translucent, backless dress with transparent fabric, just cutting off her breasts; at the beginning of the song, she puckered up for the audience at the end of this set of lyrics: "I couldn't aspire, To anything higher, Than to fill the desire, To make you my own, Paah-dum paah-dum doo bee dum, pooooo!"
Some Like It Hot (1959) An Honest Revealing Kiss	At the film's conclusion, Joe watched a soulful, sad Sugar singing the poignant "I'm Through With Love"; he decided that he was ready to reveal the truth about 'Junior' and Josephine to Sugar; dressed as Josephine, he came up to her and gave her a goodbye kiss as a female - a moment of sexual exposure; he affirmed the bond between them - both as an empathizing female and as a man after a full masculine kiss on the lips; at first believing that he was the millionaire, Sugar opened her eyes, looked up and exclaimed: "Josephine!" [Symbolically, she loved both his masculine and feminine personalities (both Junior and Joe - sephine).]
Elmer Gantry (1960) Vengeful Betrayal Kiss	In a vengeful act, one of preacher Elmer Gantry's (Burt Lancaster) old girlfriends - minister's daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) set him up and framed him with photographs taken in a compromising situation to ruin his reputation - and then accepted a charitable handout of cash that she placed in her garter
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) Classic Kiss in the Rain	The final scene of this romantic drama/comedy began with a taxi ride to New York's Idylwild Airport by Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), the daughter of a Texas dirt farmer, who was on her way to Brazil, accompanied by upstairs neighbor/writer Paul Varjak (George Peppard), who was trying to persuade her to stay and not "jump bail"; he professed his love for her ("Holly, I'm in love with you... I love you. You belong to me"); she told Paul that she didn't belong to anyone ("People don't belong to people...I'm not gonna let anyone put me in a cage"); Paul expressed his true love again ("I don't want to put you in a cage. I want to love you"); she continued to call herself a "no-name slob" ("And my cat here. We're a couple of no-name slobs. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other"); she abruptly had the cab pull over, and let her Cat out of the car into an alleyway, ordering "Beat it!"; a few moments later, Paul had the cab driver pull over again and got out -- and then told her: "You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say: 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing,' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas or on the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself"; he took a ring out of his coat pocket and threw it in her lap, telling her: "Here. I've been carrying this thing around for months. I don't want it anymore", and then closed the taxi door; after placing the ring on her wedding finger, she exited the taxi in the rain and ran after him; she found him calling out: "Here, Cat"; she went looking too and found the wet feline in a wooden crate; she hugged and embraced Cat, placing it in her coat to keep it dry; as the theme from "Moon River" played, she went over to Paul and they breathlessly kissed and embraced in the pouring rain in the alleyway; the rescued Cat was squished between them, as the camera zoomed in for a closeup, and then pulled away for medium and far shots; the film's last line was: "Cat! Cat! Oh, Cat... ohh..."
The Innocents (1961) Underage Ethereal Kiss	This film was noted for the passionate kiss between repressed and slightly deranged governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) and young 'ghostly' Miles (Martin Stephens) - the orphaned, seemingly 'innocent' nephew of wealthy Bly House estate owner (Michael Redgrave) whom she believed was the reincarnation of the previous governess Miss Jessel' (Clytie Jessop) violently murdered Irish groom and estate's valet Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde)