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Wednesday, Aug 24, 2022
7 PM (93 mins)
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BAMPFA
SUBJECTS
The Naked Kiss
Archival 35mm Print
Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey,
Fuller’s tabloid sensibilities propelled his most florid tale, starring Constance Towers as a prostitute who descends on Anytown, USA, in an effort to go straight (but only after a last trick with the town police chief) and winds up caught in a web of scandal. Marked by one of the most striking openings in cinema, in which a bald Towers is seen beating her pimp senseless with a high-heeled shoe and taking “only what’s coming to her” from the cash in his pocket, The Naked Kiss careens wildly from double entendre–laced melodrama to stirring morality play, Fuller’s sharp dialogue and black humor bridging the impossible gaps between genres. Towers’s Kelly keeps a straight face as she effortlessly goes from hooker to pediatric orthopedist, even as her dark past threatens to consume her and her love affair with the town’s richest man reveals the true meaning of the “naked kiss.”
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Samuel Fuller
Cinematographer
- Stanley Cortez
Print Info
- B&W
- 35mm
- 93 mins
Source
- UCLA Film & Television Archive
Permission
- Janus Films
CINEFILES
CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.
View The Naked Kiss documents
Samuel Fuller (program note), Institut Valencià de l'Audiovisual i de Cinematografia Ricardo Muñoz Suay, Quim Casas, 2010
Pulp fictions: the films of Samuel Fuller (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 1998
The big wet one (review), San Francisco Bay Guardian, Chuck Stephens, 1998
Un Americain en Normandie: le jour j de Samuel Fuller (press kit), GMT Productions, Noël Simsolo, 1994
The naked kiss (distributor materials), Beta Film GmbH, 1989
The fundamental Sam Fuller (article), L.A. Weekly, Ginger Varney, 1980
The naked kiss (review), L.A. Weekly, 1980
The American cinema (program note), Blake Lucas, 1970
Naked kiss, The (review), Monthly Film Bulletin, Tom Milne, 1970
Naked kiss (article), Edinburgh Film Festival, Peter Wollen, 1969
Displaying 10 of 17 publicly available documents.