裸吻

“What is the smell of the naked kiss?” Samuel Fuller’s Film-Noir-inflected moral drama THE NAKED KISS tantalizes with an olfactory come-on, then debunks it as one of the lowest human perversity. Our protagonist is Kelly (Towers), a woman bestowed with both intellect (predisposed to quotes like Goethe’s “Nothing is more terrible than active ignorance”) and physical beauty, but practices the world’s oldest profession, Fuller offers no backdrop of her past, but in the movie’s sensational, jazz-infused, frenziedly montaged opening scenes where she whups the living daylight out of her ignoble pimp (Mansfield), a shocking reveal of her bald head piques audience’s interest in this unconventional heroine, and in the following story, she will literally slap her way into a cathouse madam (Virginia Grey, grittily holds true of her vice) and ultimately, a killing instinct when facing the abject shock. Escaping from the vindictive pimp, Kelly perambulates from town to town and alights at Grantville, after transacts her first business with the local police captain Griff (Eisley, cogently channeling the suspect ambivalence), Kelly gets a rude awakening and decides to go straight and enrolls as a nurse in the hospital to minister to handicapped children, although Griff is skeptical of her wiping-the-slate-clean endeavor. Kelly proves to be more than competent in her new vocation, meanwhile saves young girls from entering her abjured old profession, even ponying up a handsome amount of dough to convince and tide over a pregnant girl to keep her baby. Pro-life and ineluctably maternal, Kelly, who admits that she is sterile, is a steely moral police on that front, and soon her distinguished poise also spellbinds the most eligible man of the town, the scion Grant (Dante), who likewise enjoys throwing apothegms like “…happiness was born a twin” from Lord Byron and “a sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle” from Baudelaire. Moreover, much contrary to her trepidation, after confessing her unsavory past to Grant, Kelly is on cloud nine when his marriage proposal isn’t retracted. That is just a too unbelievably perfect ending for a woman like Kelly (almost never happens in a fiction movie except for Garry Marshall’s PRETTY WOMAN, 1990), and Fuller patiently divulges the catch while the catchy nursery rhyme piping up on the monograph when the small-town insidiousness coldly catches up with her, dashes her hope and puts the label of a murderer on her, she needs a key witness to vindicate her version of the story, aka. the truth, but there are many impediments laying about, not least a bloody-minded Griff who just cannot believe the concealed nature of the impeccable Grant. Although the crime-clearing procedure is a bit willful and incoherent, what makes THE NAKED KISS stick is Fuller’s sledgehammer esthetics of tackling and dissecting a tabooed and thorny issue no one has dared to approach thus far, wedding the story with an engrossing pace sustained compellingly by Towers’ wholesomely righteous and affecting performance, it also pointedly flags up the society’s sexist double standards on prostitution, there is no scruples for a john to disparage a fallen woman, and THE NAKED KISS is a veritable paean of a fallen woman, ever so unsparingly fearless, no wonder she doesn’t make changes. referential entries: Fuller’s UNDERWORLD U.S.A. (1961, 6.7/10); THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959, 7.1/10).

第一次看Samuel Fuller，不爱做功课的我被开场一系列极富冲击力的镜头迅速带进状态。Fuller从视听语言里挖掘冲量的能力很厉害。

开场是真有劲，故事是真荒唐。荒唐也要看怎么说，如果编导想拍失足女性回归社会的正能量戏码，那么故事毫无疑问很荒唐，看上去连最基本的连贯都没做到。

但是Fuller的视听和Constance Towers棱角鲜明的骷髅脸让女主硬朗刚烈的一面特别具有说服力，跟她表现出柔情善良一面时释放的能量不相上下，不知该说她是一个敢于暴烈抗争的温良女性，还是善于假扮温良的暴烈女性。

女主具有femme fatale的个性，但他又不同于典型的femme fatale或者其他形象负面——无论是法律还是道德层面——的女性角色，比如《夜以继日》绿茶婊女主角朝子，后者的行为是决定性地负面，编导试图从这些负面作为本身内在为出发点，论证行为的合理性，唤起观众对其积极正面的同情或者敬畏；而《裸吻》女主角Kelly负面和正面的行为势均力敌，不需要对人物性格的其中一面进行深入的挖掘和表现，便已获得人物形象多面性的平衡。

这样一个复杂且值得探索的人物形象，不仅在影片问世的60年代，即便在当代影坛也极其少见，绝非一般编导、演员所能塑造。故事的跳跃感、形式感，甚至那些说不清道不明的暗线，与人物性格一起成为这部黑色电影令人难忘的形式的一部分。

因为女性形象具有不光彩的意味，我觉得《裸吻》如果参加今年坎城影展，九成不会得到以Cate Blanchett领衔、左翼女艺术家主导的评审团的青睐，能不被她们唾弃就不错了。很多著名演员对于意识形态和艺术形式分辨能力和评判能力之匮乏和有限都是令人惊讶的。演员跟编导确实从来没有站在同一角度看待电影艺术。意识形态挂帅的艺术价值观是如此容易侵蚀我们的理性思维，他能在顷刻间摧毁我们冷静评判艺术的意愿和能力。