Film Forum

U.S., 1947
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Starring Victor Mature, Richard Widmark, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray
Screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a story by Eleazar Lipsky
DCP. Approx. 98 min.

“I thought you was my pal!” Even the Tombs looks good to kid-loving squealer Victor Mature, after being tormented by giggling psycho Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark’s electrifying debut), forever enshrined in movie baddiedom as the guy who propels an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. “A killer’s kiss to the city.” – NY Post.

Presented with support from the Robert Jolin Osborne Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema.

Reviews

“There was not a lot of local behind-the-camera talent used in Kiss of Death, but the expertise of many uncredited workers, like D.A. Doran {Kiss of Death’s local outside prop man}, could not be duplicated in other American towns used by Hollywood as ‘documentary’ locations. It would be that wealth of experience, not iconic locations like Central Park or the Chrysler Building, on which the coming New York film renaissance would be based. That, and the pool of theatrical talent that New York could always supply in abundance.”
– Richard Koszarski, “Keep ’em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance