I guess I’m showing how old I am when I say that I think the kissing scenes in older movies were more passionate and real-looking than the ones I see in modern movies and on TV today. Kisses used to be nearly a merging of two people into one – a yearning from one to the other, and those actors and actresses were really good at making you think the people they portrayed were seriously in love with one another.
Take a look, for example at Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHavilland in that balcony scene from “The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) They each lean into the other and you can nearly hear their teeth click together. THAT’s a kiss.
Do you remember the embrace at the end of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) where George Peppard gives Audrey Hepburn that lecture about love and then grabs her and gives her a lip-lock? You could really believe that he couldn’t live another moment without expressing that passion and to hell with the rain.
And how about a show of hands for everyone who melted a little bit at the moment in “Gone with the Wind” (1939) when Clark Gable tells Vivian Leigh how she’s sending a soldier to his death with a beautiful memory and gives her the smooch of her life?
And yes, Harrison Ford lit up the theater screen when he kissed Carrie Fisher in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” (1980) You could really believe that they were in love.
And how about what is probably the most famous kiss ever filmed? Take a look at “From Here to Eternity” (1953) where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are lying on the beach with the surf splashing up all over them. (yes, we all understand that water is symbolic for sex – it just made it all that much better). They’re nearly eating each other’s mouths off and just their evident passion was enough to make the ladies in the audience sigh and go all dewy-eyed.
That’s what kisses should be. Steaming – Sizzling – Imperative - Uncontrollable. Those on-screen lovers put their entire bodies and souls into their kisses and made us believe their very lives depended on the embrace. In fact, on-screen kisses used to be so hot that during that era Bollywood filmmakers were prohibited from filming lip-to-lip kisses!
Now compare the above to what you see today. Clearly this is the age of “I-really-don’t-want-to-get-too-close-to-you-because-you-might-have-a-DISEASE.”
Imagine taking paper cutouts of a guy facing right and a girl facing left. Push the two pieces of paper together and that’s what today’s on screen kisses look like to me. Their faces remain perfectly upright, as though they really don’t like each other, much less want to be kissing each other but hey, it’s in the script. There’s no leaning into each other – No moving the head to an angle to avoid the other’s teeth so you can get even closer to the other person. I just don’t believe those kisses. For me, seeing that artificiality; that lack of emotional contact completely breaks the scene for me.
I dunno; maybe their agents want their faces to show up more clearly so they instruct them to keep their faces upright while their lips are together so the camera can see as much of their bone structure as possible. Maybe it’s a constant fight to see who shows up more recognizably on the screen. Hey, they get their percentage’s worth, I guess.
Whatever the reason, today’s on screen kisses leave me cold.
Whatever the reason, today’s on screen kisses leave me cold.
For example, take that lovely scene toward the end of “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” (2003) where the newly crowned King Aragorn kisses Arwen, his queen. Their lips meet, yeah, but their minds, hearts, and souls quite clearly do not. It was like siblings kissing; it was nearly platonic, as though the kiss was part of the coronation ceremony they were obliged to perform. Oh, it sort of came close for a moment but – sorry – I didn’t believe this was an expression of nearly 100 years of passionate love.
And on TV – one of my favorite shows is Bones. For season after season we’ve been watching for the underlying fire to ignite between Booth and Brennan, and when they finally meet lip-to-lip under some mistletoe, though the crusty prosecutor, Caroline Julian (Patricia Belcher) comments on how steamy it is, to my eyes and mind it was as sterile as an operating room. Their clamped-shut mouths actually do touch but there’s no communication there at all – no feelings (yes, we understand that the basic premise has to do with Brennan’s disconnection from her feelings but Booth is supposed to be very much in touch with his). There was no expression showing that they even vaguely like one another. It’s rehearsed, practiced, and about as spontaneous and believable as a report by Fox News.
Like I say, maybe it’s just me getting old. Maybe it takes less pilot light for today’s younger people to get ignited and they’re seeing more in these chaste lip-pressings than I am. Hey, maybe it just takes more fuel for my own fire to light up (though I rather don’t think so…). But it makes me sad to imagine that actors won’t, don’t or can’t express that wild, uncontrollable passion we all so appreciated ‘way back when, when just the name “From Here to Eternity” would turn the average woman’s cheeks scarlet.
So, hey, Hollywood producers. You’re really big on violence and gore and creatures with stuff dripping off them. You seem to WANT to deal in extremes. How about some extreme emotions that don’t have anything to do with chopping people into small, icky bits? How about focusing on REAL stories, REAL, believable characters, and REAL, honest-to-goodness, make the audience’s toes curl love WITHOUT having to show boobs, butts, or young men acting like 10 year olds?
THAT’ll sell some popcorn!
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