Film still Kiss Me Deadly © RR MGM / Park Circus / Ciné Sorbonne
Three reasons to go and see Kiss Me Deadly by Robert Aldrich
The Cinéma de la Plage takes us on a journey back to the Fifties with Kiss Me Deadly by Robert Aldrich. While private detective Mike Hammer is at the wheel in the middle of the night, he nearly runs over a frightened young woman. They are chased by gangsters, and caught in an ambush: Mike Hammer ends up in hospital and his passenger is killed. The detective decides to make an enquiry and discovers one of the most explosive Government secrets. A film not to be missed…
Because Kiss Me Deadly has the charm of the Fifties films and was one of the first independent American films. It includes all the codes of a film noir: the private detective, the femme fatale, the night scenes and an explosive ending that we'll keep a secret from you…
Because it revolutionised the film noir. Kiss Me Deadly begins with a scene of rare brutality. Moreover, Mike Hammer is a selfish, cold-hearted, calculating detective, far from a bighearted hero. The film was released during the Cold War, and is also a social and political thriller, a criticism of McCarthyism focused on the question of nuclear war.
Because it influenced several generations of film directors, from Jean-Luc Godard to Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch. When the film was released, it divided critics, being judged as too nihilistic, and maybe too avant-garde, but it made its mark. In 1987, François Truffaut wrote in his book Les Films de ma vie:
“In order to enjoy Kiss Me Deadly, you must love cinema and remain touched by the memory of evenings during which we discovered films like Scarface, Under Capricorn, The Blood of a Poet, The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne or The Lady from Shanghai.”
