Killer’s Kiss

In Kubrick’s first film noir, he weds the moody, urban milieu of Day of the Fight with the narrative experimentation that he would explore further in his subsequent crime thriller, The Killing. Fading boxer Jamie Smith falls for the girl next door, or in this case the girl on the other side of his flophouse courtyard: Irene Kane, a taxi dancer who works for lecherous Frank Silvera at Pleasureland, a midtown dive. With his hired guns in tow, Silvera plays a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with Smith that limns the sordid underbelly of New York. Shot on location throughout the Big Apple, Killer’s Kiss prominently features the old Penn Station, Times Square, and a chase across the vast rooftops that overlook the industrial expanse now known as DUMBO. Tonight’s screening will be preceded by The Seafarers, Kubrick’s final short documentary and his first work in color.

The Seafarers 1953/color/30 min.  | Scr: Will Chasen; dir: Stanley Kubrick; w / Don Hollenbeck, members of the Seafarers Union. | Restored by the Museum of Modern Art with funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique partnership between the Directors Guild of America (DGA); the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA);  the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM); and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW).