Best of the buss: Top on-screen kisses
If only real-life kisses were as romantic as movie kisses: the orchestral swell, the crashing waves, the heaving bodices, the lipstick that never smears. Sadly, we’ve got to settle for the real thing, with its chapped lips, clashing teeth and slobber. (OK, maybe that’s just me ...)
But the romantic in us can still indulge in the idealized kiss. Here are10 of cinema’s most swoon-worthy moments, from windswept Technicolor embraces to smooching pooches.
(2002, rated PG-13): The first Spidey film helped usher in a new era of comic-book movies, and the charm of this scene goes a long way in explaining why. A costumed Spider-Man swoops in to save the secret love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) — who doesn’t yet know he’s her dorky but sweet next-door neighbor, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) — from a pack of assailants in a dark alley. “Do I get to say thank you this time?” she asks coyly as the masked avenger dangles in front of her before tentatively rolling his mask down just enough to plant a lingering upside-down kiss on his lips in the pouring rain.
(2003, R): Sofia Coppola’s minimalist love story treads lightly but hits hard. Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, the disillusioned wife of a photographer on assignment in Tokyo. There, she meets Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a past-his-prime American actor. Lonely and bemused in a foreign country, the unlikely couple bond in the neon glow of Tokyo, their aching connection culminating in a famously ambiguous ending, where the parting pair share a tear-stained kiss and inaudibly whispered words. You don’t need to hear what Murray whispered to know what he said — the look on Johansson’s face translates it perfectly.
(1997, rated PG-13): It’s easy to mock the saccharine romanticism of James Cameron’s epic (and epi- cally sappy) love story — one that’s as doomed as the ship upon which it flourishes. But why would you want to? Everything about Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose’s (Kate Winslet) first kiss on the prow of the oceanliner — from the rosy hues of sunset to the keening penny whistle solo to “I’m flying, Jack!” — is the stuff 14-year-old girls’ hearts are made of.
(2001, rated R): Anyone who suffers through a relationship with Hugh Grant in full cad mode deserves to end up with Colin Firth in dashing Mr. Darcy mode. Bridget (Renee Zellweger), realizing she has made a terrible mistake, chases after Mark Darcy (Firth) through the falling snow to win him back — in just her knickers. He plants a kiss on her so steamy she observes, “Nice boys don’t kiss like that.” His response is too cheeky to print, but leave it to Firth to make something so naughty sound so romantic.
(1988, rated R): It’s not one kiss, but hundreds of them, frame after frame of the blackand-white embraces a lonely Italian projectionist spliced together into a romantic reel that serves as a sort of diary. A man reflects on his childhood growing up in Sicily under Catholic rule, where the town’s priest demands the resident projectionist to cut all kisses and illicit embraces from every movie. The projectionist, taking a shine to the boy’s love of movies, takes him under his wing; but it isn’t until the boy is grown and the projectionist is dead that he discovers the hidden reel, on which the secret heart of a romantic is laid bare to the strain’s of Ennio Morricone’s mournful score.
(1952, not rated): John Wayne isn’t often celebrated as a romantic lead. But that same gruff bravado that made him a Western- and warmovie icon serves him just as well as a no-nonsense paramour. Frequent Wayne collaborator John Ford directs this gorgeous, windswept love story set in the Irish countryside, where Sean Thornton (Wayne), an American come back to reclaim his family’s farm, falls for brassy redhead Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara). When she proves too much to handle, Wayne knows just how to handle her anyway — whip her into an impassioned embrace and kiss her good and hard.
(1953, not rated): It’s one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable movie kisses of all time: The impossibly pretty Burt Lancaster and equally impossibly pretty Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf, the waves washing over their entwined bodies. The movie, set in Hawaii in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, follows Sgt. Warden (Lancaster) as he strikes up an affair with his captain’s neglected wife (Kerr) — an affair made all the sexier because it’s a punishable offense in the service. They run back to their towels, their sopping bodies joining again for another embrace. “I never knew it could be like this,” she says, breathless with the wonder of it all. “Nobody ever kissed me the way you do.”
(1955, G): It was iconic on arrival, that accidental spaghetti kiss by serenaded moonlight. Credit Disney magic for achieving one of the all-time most romantic movie moments with twitterpated cartoon dogs. Disney took a classic romantic pairing — a good girl falling for a bad boy — and applied it to a pair of pooches, with a refined cocker spaniel, Lady, swooning for Tramp, a stray mutt from the wrong side of the tracks. Essential for dog lovers and romantics alike.
(1939, rated G): It’s the most beloved cinematic love story of all time, so of course it contains one of cinema’s greatest kisses. After much flirting, rebuffing, scolding and swooning, siren Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) finds herself at the mercy of scoundrel Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), who whisks her to safety as Union soldiers descend on the South. She pleads with him not to leave her; he does anyway, but not before he professes his love (she all the while struggling against his embrace like an angry cat) and plants one on her against a sky as red as Scarlett’s name as Atlanta burns in the distance. The slap he gets on the cheek is as good as a kiss right back.
(1946, not rated): In an era when three seconds was law, Alfred Hitchcock devised a way to have two of Hollywood’s sexiest stars lock lips for 21⁄ minutes. The buzzkill known as the Production Code set that puritanical three-second limit, which Hitchcock flouted by having his stars’ lips separate and rejoin, separate and rejoin, their faces centimeters away as they whisper sweet nothings in between. It’s a forbidden love — she’s the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, he’s the government agent who’s recruited her to seduce a Nazi on the lam — which makes their lingering intimacy all the more erotic. Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.