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His pathetic apartment's window looks directly onto the window of her dismal apartment and vice versa. Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) is a boxer with a glass jaw who'd go cross-eyed at the complexity of a clerk counting back his change (as do I often enough). Gloria Price (Irene Kane) is the girl next door as a pay-per-dance hostess at Pleasureland. Irene and Jamie probably thought they were brilliant actors. After every take, he likely enthused, "Man, I can't believe how you really pegged it. I completely forgot you weren't Gloria and had to remind myself we were acting." She would have replied, "It's because you're so amazing you make it easy for me." They probably talked at length about the complex ambiguities of Gloria Price, and the attraction between Gordon and Price. They likely believed they really made those characters come alive. They probably spoke in hushed tones to each other about how Kubrick didn't respect actors or understand the actor's art with the way he cluttered up the film with obscure symbolism only he could appreciate.
Or maybe not.
Killer's Kiss is no great film. The acting is as dismal as the settings. The music is lackluster pointlessness and--with the exception of the more percussive pieces, in particular the one which accompanies the fight scene in the mannequin factory/warehouse toward the end of the film--would have been better left out. There are obvious editing problems which are glaringly obvious because Kubrick's editing style already displays itself a breed apart. In other words (or nevertheless) Killer's Kiss is a film Kubrick devotees should have with, looking for early hints at Kubrick themes, comparing shots, picking out this thing which was also in that other film, and this other thing which he did again in this and that. For instance, there's dancing as the gate to a secret underworld. Music and a lazy, meandering foxtrot are the open sesame to the unruly forbidden in both Killer's Kiss and Eyes Wide Shut.
Film Noir often has the primary action having already occurred when the film opens, the story then related via flashbacks. Employing this stylistic device, Killer's Kiss begins with Davey Gordon standing in Penn Station reflecting on how maybe he's taken life too seriously, maybe that's why these things have happened, whatever it was that began to happen to him three days beforehand, the day of his fight in the arena with Kid Rodriguez. October 25th.
We find ourselves, three days prior, viewing Davey and Gloria in their respective one room apartments as they get ready for work. Funny isn't it how much their apartments look alike. What can we learn about them there? Davey, the way he feeds his goldfish, he's a guy with heart, isn't he? His face magnified by the fish bowl's glass, he peers at the inmates like a benevolent, giant god. Along with Washland (Washland?) customer tickets, he's got photos of what must be rural home away from home stuck up all over the mirror in which he examines his face like he quite can't get used to it. Those photos say there is more to Davey than what's on the surface. He's not just a New York boxer living in a cheap room dangerous to the soul in its lack of personality. He came from somewhere. Everybody's gotta come from somewhere. The photos are artifacts stuck on the glass so you keep a clue. The photos are part of the mirror.
Gloria, through her window, watches Davey finish dressing and leave. Time for her to go to work too. So we watch them both go down the stairs, go down the stairs, go down the stairs, and go down the stairs, to some of the lamest incidental music imaginable. Outside, the way they walk toward the street they look like they're together. Even Vincent Rapallo, the Pleasureland boss (Frank Silvera), waiting for Gloria in his convertible, remarks on this, that she's doing good for herself. Nah, they just live in the same building, she says. But we know different, because Kubrick has told us so, that psychologically and fate-wise she and Davey are already intimate. All that's wanting is the crucial incident that will smack them together like a bad car wreck.
In Eyes Wide Shut a musician at the Christmas dance is from Seattle. He wishes he could be home with the wife and kids instead of in New York, but you have to be where the work is. He is pivotal to Tom Cruise's entrance into the underworld, the one who offers the password. Killer's Kiss also offers a connection between New York and Seattle. While Davey rides the subway to the arena, he reads a letter we saw him take from his mailbox. Dated October 10th, it's from Uncle George and Aunt Grace who live on a ranch just outside Seattle. They are worried because they haven't heard from him yet this month. Grace's arthritis is better; she can even ride Jumper. Other news is the purchase of a chestnut Arabian stallion from the Hendersons. In a few hours, Davey will be getting a call from Uncle George inviting him on a vacation, after which...well, let me not jump the gun. Davey's sentimental smile hints these are the folks of the earth who make life meaningful, whereas big bad, impersonal New York sucks your sap to feed the apple of its eye.
Davey's subway ride reminds me of the shuttle flight to the orbiting station in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Come to think of it, during the subsequent flight to the moon, wasn't there briefly seen a televised karate exhibition?
A peculiar sequence of shots--what appears to be a toy Santa licking candied apples, hotdogs, ice cream sundaes, a photorapher's studio, a small child doll swimming in a bowl of water--precedes our arrival at Pleasureland. Kubrick fans are starting to get high already; nothing is incidental in one of Stanley's films, those wind-up toy automatons must mean something. Indeed, the sequence is so artlessly obvious that one is likely to dismiss it as frivolous. Guy with camera gets to record some peculiarities of the street. Neat, crappy stuff, huh? Look at that baby paddle! If Davey had the imagination, or the money, he'd buy that swimming baby doll and plop her in the goldfish bowl, except Davey's a nice, simple guy. He'd probably only do that if he was drunk.
Through a series of back and forth shots we watch Gloria's actions that night alongside Davey's. Gloria stripping down to the armor of a big black strapless bra parallels Davey's chest being massaged. Kubrick offers a comparison of the boxer's preparations for his fight with Gloria's profession as a dancer. Dancing is fighting and fighting is dancing. The arena is surrounded by ropes. The dance floor at Pleasureland is caged by a mock fence, palm trees painted on the walls. Are we locked out of Eden or earthenware newbies waiting for the snake to proffer a juicy Red Delicious? If Eden's so righteous great then why will Gloria later be so eager to slip away from the oasis and the stalking obsession her boss has with her? Vinnie, familiar with Davey's career, is anxious for Gloria to see him fight. He goes down to the hall, almost begins a brawl with the military dude who's dancing with her, then while his thugs escort the dude in uniform to the door, Vinnie escorts Gloria up to his office to watch the fight, the walls of that office lined with "Blue Jeans" posters illustrating violent scenes--a brawl in a pool hall, some unlucky fellow pinned down vulnerable as a sacrificial lamb on a pool table's green.
Kid Rodriguez is no physical Goliath, yet down goes glass-jaw Davey in a fight scene the tone and lighting of which will be later recalled in the war room of Dr. Strangelove. The veteran whose career never quite takes off, which looks like it's always waiting for something to happen, is flattened by this new competitor who did have 22 straight wins and now 23. Cut to Gloria's boss making the moves on her and her responding in kind, if initially distracted by Davey, who she possibly thinks looks like Burt Lancaster. Cut to Gloria walking home through the jungle of city streets in an apparently troubled, discombobulated state of mind. She looks lost. But so does the actress often enough.
Davey is on his way to good and drunk when Gloria gets home. He watches her undress and when Uncle George calls to invite him to Washington, he can barely concentrate, can barely speak, his eyes are that full of Gloria in her slip. Uncle George wonders what's wrong and Davey pleads he's just a little dopey. When Gloria goes to bed, the floor show over, so does Davey.
As earlier mentioned, in Eyes Wide Shut the piano player from Seattle gives Tom Cruise the password to the scene behind the scenes. After Uncle George's call inviting Davey out for a needed vacation (hey, you, here's respite or a not-so-subtle reminder you're a failure in the great out there and need to get back to the basics) Davey has a dream. He's in negative, everything reversed, Alice go Wonderland speeding down empty city streets, voices we heard at the arena yelling he's no good, to go home, go home, and then a scream which causes him to wake and the scream is still going on. It's Gloria struggling with the Pleasureland boss.
This is the awaited car wreck. Washed-up boxer, taking up a second career as hero, rushes to Gloria's defense. But the boss is gone by the time he gets there, for via Gloria's looking-glass window he saw Davey charge out like a knight looking for a fight and booked it. What's the story, Davey wants to know. What happened? A flashback in a flashback. We're pointedly not told exactly what Gloria's boss is sorry for but he had shown up at her place to apologize. She spurned him. Even laughed and told him he was an old man who smelled bad. They fought. She screamed.
While Gloria sleeps, her hero looks about her apartment. There's this weird sad baby doll with short blond hair like Gloria's hanging on the head of her bed. She's got, wow, all these feminine undergarments drying on a clothesline stretched across her room, which fascinate Mr. Masculine. Davey touches her nylons. He examines the feminine trappings on her dresser. Hey, doesn't that guy in the photo on the dresser look like her boss? I thought so. If she despises her boss and thinks he's an old man who smells bad, why does she have a photo of him on the dresser.
Because it's not him. In the morning, Gloria tells all about the guy in the photo, who now we realize only resembles her boss. And we see there's a picture of a stately brunette neighboring his. Not his wife. It's Gloria's father and her sister, Iris. She's going to tell a story that's really Iris' story, not her own. We're going to have to watch Iris (Ruth Sobotka, Kubrick's then wife) dance on the stage, solo, the entire time. Watching her dance, we hear how Iris was eight when Gloria was born, when their mother died. Watching Iris dance solo, we hear she was a dancer. She danced with the Ballet Russe. A man proposed to Iris on Gloria's 13th birthday and Iris turned him down because he wanted her to give up dancing and be a wife and mother. Dad laughed and laughed. Watching Iris dance, we hear how dad then got sick and Iris married in order to take care of dad. Then dad died and Iris showed no emotion and Gloria accused her of only ever acting like she cared when she didn't at all. Still watching Iris dance, we hear how Iris put on the music she and dad liked best, their song, one she used to dance to, and slit her wrists. Gloria went to town and got a job dancing at Pleasureland and thanked God Iris never had to dance in a depraved human zoo like that. But then, Gloria kind of got to like it.
Bad girl.
Iris, the brunette, the graceful, high-class ballerina--whose dancing is perhaps not unintentionally depicted as uninspired and flat. Iris, the rainbow goddess. Kubrick and rainbows. In Eyes Wide Shut Cruise is approached by two women at the dance who say they will take him to where the rainbow ends, and he gets his costume for the secret party at Rainbow Fashions, the owner of which appears queerly ready to prostitute his randy daughter after an odd scene in which he goes ballistic after he discovers her in a compromising situation. But Iris who commits suicide after her father's death? What's up with Kubrick's rainbowm his fans might ask? What is this with the likeness between the so-stated old and smelly Pleasureland boss and dear old dad anyway. And why does the rainbow goddess off herself? If there's no rainbow, where's the protection against the next flood.
Doesn't it rain a lot in Seattle?
Needless to say, Gloria's got self-esteem issues. Probably some abandonment issues to boot. No wonder she gets depressed when, after ice cream, Davey reveals he's leaving for Washington the next day. Voila, suddenly they're in love and they're going to go off together. She's going to pick up her money from the dance hall and his manager is going to bring him his money at the dance hall at 8:15 sharp. With that money they will run off to Seattle and live happily ever after.
The acting, which has been consistently rank, never gets any better. It has been rank up to this point and shall continue to be rank.
That evening, there's more fun for Kubrick fans at the dance hall. Davey stands outside and we're treated to shots of the surrounding neon. There's "Grand Union" just across the street from where lonely men come to dance with vixens. "Childs" down a block. "The Queen of Sheba." "Hilarious--Down Memory Lane." Signs are everywhere, just as in Eyes Wide Shut. As Gloria ascends the tiled stairway to the dance hall, classic Kubrick viewpoint, we see above her the sign "Watch your step." Waiting for her is the boss, who already knows she's leaving. When he heard the news he wandered by two old photos of what must be his folks, his past (everybody's got a past frozen in still life) then busted his glass against a daffy, grotesque painting of two men grinning at him, caricatures, almost like clowns. Meanwhile, outside two guys in fezzes are dancing, playing "Ol' Suzanna" on the harmonica, clowning it up. Knights of Columbus conventioneers on the loose? The Fraternal order of Red Felt? They approache Davey. For some reason one of them has a paintbrush and he brushes Davey's jacket with it. They grab his scarf and he chases them down the street, for which reason Davey's not there when his manager arrives early, at 7:30, with the money. In the meantime, Gloria is upstairs with the boss and those "Blue Jeans" illustrations, and the illustration of the man laid out on the pool table. When the boss refuses to pay her what she's owed, what she's earned, she goes back down and from high on the stairway landing we see her standing outside the door, beside Davey's manager, she not knowing who he is, and both of them looking very much like mannequins, Gloria modeling light colored clothing on the left, the manager in dark colored clothing on the right. Then the boss calls her back up and sends down two gangsters who end up in an alley with the manager (a "No Toilet" sign is observed) where they'll bash in his head off-screen. Davey returning with his scarf, we see a sign that says "angels" (those fez guys, yeah, must have been) and Kubrick fans will also note the "I" of Childs is now burned out. Davy's been saved by angelic, clownish intervention. But, the poor manager.
Gloria is given an extra hundred by her boss which I suppose kind of makes up for the money Davey didn't get from the dead manager. Giddy with their standing on the threshold of a new life, she and Davey eat ham and eggs and say "goodbye to the bright lights." Back in his room, Davey packs and leaves a note on the envelope from Uncle George's letter of 10/10 that the fish are to be fed daily. He goes to get Gloria and finds she's gone. He hears noises. The police are in his apartment. Davey is in bad trouble. Looks like the law thinks he killed his manager. Davey takes a gun to go find the boss who, it turns out, is having Gloria held against her will at a loft on 24th street. We've seen the hustle-bustle of Manhattan night life. Come daylight, it's nothing but empty streets and sprawling brick warehouses, the neon burned out by the sun and everyone who isn't personally involved with Davey's plight vampire-vaporized.
I'm not going to go into what follows, except for mentioning that Kubrick's camera focuses several times on an Ace of Spades, and there's a one-eyed Jack of Spades in the story mirroring Davey flattened again on another floor with single Cyclopean eye agape, after which Davey crashes through a glass window. But mainly I thought I'd mention what is a pretty neat fight that happens in a place filled with nude mannequins, most without arms or hands, all these mannequin heads and hands sitting, hanging about, a head here and there looking just about lifelike. Kubrick fans will perhaps be reminded of the "Rainbow Fashions" costume shop and its mannequins in Eyes Wide Shut.
And Gloria's weird, sad little doll that was hanging from the head of her bed.
Death to the robot? Long live the free man?
The story's a limp one. Feeble. When all's said and done, one's left to ruminate on the title, Kubrick ensures it.
Iris left her dancing for a dying dad who died and she committed suicide. When Gloria tries to leave her dancing it's instead for a beau, and the daddy boss goes after her. He says he could kill her. He really could, he says. Is his the kiss of the killer? Or what about the kiss at film's end that takes place right under credits that remind us this is a film about the killer's kiss? Is the killer's kiss akin to a Judas kiss, and if so who is the Judas? Do we even see the real killer's kiss or has that fatal action occurred off screen? What about Iris playing "their song" before she leeches her blood life out all over her marital bed. Kubrick jumble-mumble wandering the Freudian Oedipal trap doesn't work any more than it worked for Freud.
The way Gloria eyes the fighter Davey when she sees him on television, aware that he lives across from her, I have wondered if her budding love affair with the boxer isn't the killer's kiss, she looking for the hero who is going to save her from her situation. A boxer just might do the trick.
With Killer's Kiss one isn't (or I'm not) too inclined to probe the film stock for questions and answers which have yet to be made artistically coherent. The film is young Kubrick, beyond baby steps, but with its own busted glass chin impossible to piece together, even though once the violence explodes out of its neat containing ring into the streets we have the boxer coming into his own, now that he really has something for which to fight off stage. If Killers' Kiss is interesting viewing it's for two reasons. The film establishes Kubrick's attitude toward script and images, images acting themselves as script, as words, suggested by a repeated return to the neon sign "scripto" in the collage of signs and neon which assails the viewer while Davey waits in front of the dance hall for Gloria. The film is also critical regarding Kubrick's transition from still photographer to moving pics, highlighting broadly what he will bring to them from his early career as a still photographer, a fascination which his father initially fostered. Kubrick's first short, a documentary, had to do with a boxer of whom he'd done some stills for a "Look" assignment. Perhaps Kubrick had to do Killer's Kiss, his fiction about boxing, before moving on, though never leaving the stuff of Killer's Kiss behind, as in it he's busily constructing metaphors which will have the good grace to flow more subtly in the future, all the way down to Eyes Wide Shut which returns us to seedy Manhattan nights and several days of confronting the spirits.
Copyright © May 29, 2000 Idyllopus
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