The Bloggomist: My Celluloid Fix
The Naked Kiss (1964)

My love affair with Sam Fuller began over a decade ago when I stumbled upon an old copy of his pulp film, The Naked Kiss. It felt like fate. Although one might argue that Naked was not as visually stunning or complex as his other masterpieces, namely Shock Corridor or Pick Up on South Street, the film was a direct and honest look into the great man’s philosophy. A fierce message of individuality showed through cracks of suburban complacency. In this landscape,d he carefully erected mundane monuments of Amerikitsch like wooden blocks and then, with one fell swoop of cynicism, destroyed them all. Fuller reveled in the brash and decisive role of God.

Within a few minutes of flickering celluloid, Naked sucked me in. A livid prostitute beats the living daylights out of her two-timing pimp, a scene magnificently heightened by jarring first-person POV. It only dawned on me later that Fuller, himself, was attempting to knock the complacency out of his audience. Telling them from the opening scene to wake the hell up and listen because he had a message to relay. Our subjective self paralleled the pimp — pummeled to near unconsciousness and then awoken by Fuller’s furious blast of morality. I knew at that startling moment, Naked was ahead of its time.

Constance Towers plays Kelly in the film, a character who symbolizes America’s ‘hooker with a heart of gold.’ Her principles are nothing short of Joan d’Arc-ian, despite a past tarnished by prostitution.

Kelly engages in a brief tryst with Griff, the town’s policeman, who tries to blackmail her into relocating to the outskirts of town to Candy’s prostitution ring, where “all kinds of men can find all kinds of sweets.” She instead avoids the joint altogether in an attempt to start over as a “respectable citizen,” and works as a nurse at Grantville Children’s Orphanage. On her journey of self-rehabilitation, she gets involved with Grant, the generous benefactor of the town, and unintentionally exposes the truth behind the “naked kiss” in a thrilling dénouement.

Don’t be put off by the starchy dialogue or saccharine sentiments of the stock characters. Well-intentioned, Fuller’s heavy-handed technique creates a metaphysical separation between suburbia and his audience, rendering the familiar into a hollow and alien world plagued by dark secrets. So in the end (in true gumshoe form), he digs past the quiet facade and exposes a seething mass of lies and perversity.

Fuller’s distinct style made him a cult icon in the late 50’s and continued his legacy well into the 60’s. Early on, France felt his tip. Jean-Luc Godard endlessly praised his directing style; he even had Fuller cameo in Pierrot le Fou (a year after Naked’s release), in which Jean-Paul Belmondo (as Godard’s charismatic alter-ego) casually leans in and asks Fuller what cinema means to him. The kindred connection between Fuller and Godard is not surprising when considering their backgrounds. They both pursued journalism careers before becoming filmmakers and their tireless quest for truth became their cinematic oeuvre. As contrarians of the status quo, they were storytellers who crafted sociopolitical context into their heavy narratives.

Themes from the Naked Kiss were so powerful that they resonated 20 years later in the retro glory of David Lynch’s 1986 release, Blue Velvet. For you see, Fuller’s film was an intriguing insight into the hypocrisy of American ideals and exemplary of the late auteur’s natural ability to push the envelope.

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To see more from Sylvia Adams, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/sylvia/

Published on 16 November 2009 | |