KISS AND TELL
The first onscreen kiss happened in 1896 in a movie called — The Kiss. It was a mere sliver of film, running only 50 feet (about 18 seconds), but it sparked immediate controversy. Chicago publisher Herbert S. Stone called it “absolutely disgusting” and demanded police action. “Neither participant is particularly attractive,” he complained, “and the spectacle of their prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was hard to bear.” But the New Orleans Daily News defended the movie, proclaiming that “kissing has been a custom time out of mind.”
Twenty-six years later, silent heart throbs Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson had their onscreen lust severely curtailed — in North America at least. Because Hollywood's fledgling Production Code had placed a time limit on screen kisses, Paramount made two versions of their 1922 movie, Beyond The Rocks — one for foreign audiences, the other to pacify the moral guardians at home. As one critic cynically observed, Valentino, the screen's great lover, barely had time to get his nostrils flaring with passion before the scene ended in the curtailed U.S. treatment. Which prompted co-star Swanson to observe that U.S. moviemaking was controlled by a stopwatch.
The Production Code was around but notably ineffectual until the early 1930s, when the arrival of sound (and with it the opportunity for new frankness in cinema) reactivated the censorship brigade. By 1934, a strengthened code was in place, waging war against such moral infamies as double beds and prolonged kisses.
In 1946, director Alfred Hitchcock would give the censors the finger when filming Notorious. A famously erotic moment features an extended kissing scene between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman — one that runs considerably longer than the three-second limit the Code imposed. Hitch got around it by having his actors kiss, talk briefly, kiss again, pause to nibble each other's ears, kiss once more, lean away and talk, and kiss yet again. Never at any point did his stars kiss for more than three seconds. By the 1960s, filmmakers were pushing back, a new candour was emerging, and censorship was beginning to crumble. But it has not exactly been emancipation time for the onscreen kiss, not with so many performers expressing their revulsion. Among the more notorious examples:
Tony Curtis on kissing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot:
It was like “kissing Hitler ... She nearly choked me to death my deliberately sticking her tongue down my throat into my windpipe.”
Thandie Newton on being kissed by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2:
“It was slightly icky and sort of wet.”
Tobey Maguire on his upside-down kiss with Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man:
“There was rain pouring up or down my nose. I couldn't breathe and I was gasping for breath out of the corner of Kirsten's mouth. Poor girl — I was giving her mouth-to-mouth instead of kissing her.”
Joanna Lumley on being kissed by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street:
“It's actually no fun kissing actors, no fun at all. There are so many takes and you both have to chew so much chewing gum. It's like kissing someone in a dentist's waiting room.”
Jamie Portman