Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)
Directed by Norman Foster
Norma Productions / Universal Pictures
Norman Foster’s Kiss the Blood Off My Hands begins with some onscreen text that could fit at the beginning of nearly every single post-war film noir:
The aftermath of war is rubble — the rubble of cities and of men. They are the casualties of a pitiless destruction. The cities can be rebuilt, but the wounds of men, whether of the mind or of the body, heal slowly.
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is based on Gerald Butler’s bestselling 1940 novel of the same name, and stars Burt Lancaster as Bill Saunders, a tightly wound, violent man with a mysterious past. He says he was born in Canada and raised in Detroit, but he doesn’t go into much more detail. When the film begins, he’s alone in a pub in an unnamed city in England, hunched over the bar and nursing a pint. When the barman tells him that it’s closing time, he lashes out violently. His assault on the barman starts a fire that his uncontrollable rage will continue to stoke throughout the film.
The role of Bill Saunders seems tailor-made for Lancaster at this point in his career. He made his debut in The Killers (1946) as Ole “Swede” Andreson, a brutish former prizefighter. In his next film, Brute Force (1947), he played Joe Collins, the toughest man in a tough prison. In Desert Fury (1947), Lancaster played a sheriff’s deputy who was also a former bronco buster. In I Walk Alone (1948), he played a former bootlegger and all-around alpha male who was determined to exact vengeance on his former partner.
Subsequent roles in All My Sons (1948) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) allowed Lancaster to stretch his thespic muscles a little, but Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is a solid return to type.
In the NY Times review of the film, published on October 30, 1948, the headline was Lancaster Fights the World Again. The first paragraph of the review was as follows: “The process of humanizing Burt Lancaster obviously is not going to be easy and it is going to take time. Mr. Lancaster is handy with his fists and speaks most eloquently when using them. But to develop fully as an actor and to come over to the right side of society he will have to make a break someday, for there are only so many variations on the theme of being misunderstood and Mr. Lancaster has just about exhausted them all.”
The reviewer praised the film, however, especially its three-act structure and strong climax, two elements which the reviewer lamented were sadly absent from most current films (apparently this is not just a 21st-century problem).
I think that Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is a tremendously effective film noir. What it lacks in innovative storytelling it makes up for with strong performances — not only by Lancaster but also by Joan Fontaine as the woman who grows to love him and Robert Newton as the Cockney schemer who is determined to manipulate him through blackmail. In addition to the acting, the shadowy cinematography by Russell Metty sharpens the violence and suspense of the film, and the tense, driving score by Miklós Rózsa (who also wrote the music for The Killers, Brute Force, and Desert Fury) propels the action of the film and mirrors Lancaster’s barely controlled rage that constantly threatens to boil over.
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