A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

Very Cool!!!

Brilliant and touching

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is not your average 50's noir. Instead we have a low-down manipulative killer (Robert Wagner as Bud) set against the leafy backdrop of a college campus instead of the usual grimy cheapjack one. And from the clothes and cars down to the shotgun wedding ethic, it practically screams mid 1950s. Mary Astor is Bud's predatory mother who wants her son to marry into wealth and social position, and Joanne Woodward is Dorie, Bud's sweet and naive girlfriend who believes he really loves her and wants to marry her. But Dorie gets pregnant and dad is the unforgiving type, and Bud is afraid Dorie will be disinherited and Bud will become just another schlemiel working his way through college with a wife and baby in tow with no dough. Thus since Bud actually is in love with Dorie's dad's fortune, Dorie must go, and I don't mean to another college. But Bud is careful. He is clever and makes Dorie's death look like a suicide - poor girl never saw it coming. And since Bud has learned so much about Dorie's sister, Ellen, from Dorie, that is his next romantic stop. But like so many killers, Bud has overlooked some things. For one thing Dorie wrote Ellen right before her "suicide" saying that she had met somebody and was very happy. Thus Ellen is just not buying the suicide angle and goes looking for the truth, even though the killer is now her boyfriend! How will all of this work out? Watch and find out. George McReady is Dorie's and Ellen's rich father who is willing to believe the worst of anybody, especially his own children, and he is great as always. I recommend this one if it ever comes your way.

Seen for the first time close to sixty years after it was made this film fails to register on almost every level and it's yet another movie where a cast comprising several 'names' of the day appear to be reading from different hymn books. The starring role, a social-climbing sociopath, goes to Robert Wagner, a Fox contractee who'd been groomed for stardom via a series of 'pretty boy' roles until, presumably having attained some clout, he persuaded his studio to let him have a stab at something more substantial. Joanne Woodward, an excellent actress, who had slowly but surely carving a reputation, turned in arguably the worst performance of her career as the first victim, whilst Jeffrey Hunter doesn't really cut it as a pipe-smoking academic. If you think these last two were miscast get a load of George Macready as Daddy Gotrocks, father of both Joanne Woodward and Virginia Leith, the next prey in Wagner's sights. It's watchable but only just.

A Kiss Before Dying is directed by Gerd Oswald and adapted to screenplay by Lawrence Roman from the novel of the same name written by Ira Levin. It stars Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward, Virginia Leith, Jeffrey Hunter and Mary Astor. A CinemaScope/De Luxe Color production, music is by Lionel Newman and cinematography by Lucien Ballard.Plot basically finds Wagner as a scheming pretty boy willing to commit murder in order to reach the riches of an inheritance. Story bubbles away nicely as Bud Corlis (Wagner) and Dorothy Kingship (Woodward), he sly and distant - she vulnerable and love struck, both hold court with performances of merit. The spiky edge comes by way of knowing what Bud is up to, and that poor Dorothy is completely oblivious, and when the key moment comes, it's shocking and really perches ones expectation levels to the edge of the seat.Sadly the second half of the movie doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first, for here the focus shifts from a twist into an investigation by Dorothy's sister, Ellen (Leith), who refuses to accept the official party line surrounding her sister. It's all very competently mounted, but the pervading sense of menace has dissipated and in place is just an average murder mystery.Wagner and Woodward are very good, Leith not so much, while Hunter as a pipe smoking professor is badly miscast and Astor is under used. Oswald's direction is fine, with some nifty long takes and some very cheeky visual jokes that only become apparent once story has run its course. Ballard's Scope photography is impressive, managing to make the bright colourful city surrounds always appear as threatening, and Newman's musical arrangements are indicative of the murder mystery splinter of 50s film noir.The themes at the core of the picture are daring and interesting, though more should have been made of the hinted at fact that Bud is a troubled war veteran. It's not all that it can be, the second half diluting the whole as it were, but this is still a tasty noir thriller worthy of catching. 7/10

1956 marks the year Robert Wagner went over to the dark side. In The Mountain he plays Spencer Tracy's spoiled younger brother and in A Kiss Before Dying, Wagner is a charming, but quite ruthless young man looking to better himself through bedroom skills.In fact impregnating Joanne Woodward might have done the trick in many cases. Normally they'd have gotten married and a reluctant father would have been happy just to protect his daughter's good name. However in Joanne's case and in her sister Virginia Leith's case, their father is puritanical George MacReady who long ago tossed their mom on the street because of an ancient indiscretion. Joanne knows full well that this could be her fate. Wagner knows if he's exposed as the dirty dog who knocked her up, MacReady will give him problems too.So to extricate himself Wagner plans a quite deliberate murder of Woodward. When it happens Leith isn't convinced its suicide even with a cryptic note. But young police detective Jeffrey Hunter likes her anyway. The story begins when Leith begins her own investigation and Wagner starts courting Leith.Robert Wagner shows his acting chops in this film. He was like that other contract player at 20th Century Fox Tyrone Power who kept pressing for roles to show what he could do as well. Both of course eventually got them. Joanne Woodward is a year away from her career breakthrough in The Three Faces Of Eve and she's sweet and tender as the naive kid in the clutches of a ruthless charmer. And George MacReady can be as evil as a puritan as well as the most diabolical of villains in which he's usually cast.A Kiss Before Dying is not a bad film, but with someone like an Alfred Hitchcock directing it would have been great. As it is, it's entertaining, but falls short of being a classic.