Kiss Me Deadly (1955, USA)

One of the things that makes Kiss Me Deadly so fantastic is its use of the noir genre for a story that may seem noir-conventional at first, but actually has bigger, more serious things in store. Mike Hammer is a sleazy Angelino private eye, accustomed to checking up on cheating spouses, but after he picks up a barefoot and hysterical woman on the freeway one night, his investigations take a more serious bent – but how serious doesn’t come out until the final minutes.

I finally got around to Kiss Me Deadly through Los Angeles Plays Itself. The documentary uses Deadly as a prime example of the realistic use of the geography of Los Angeles, along with the need for automobiles that this geography has created. Indeed, movement and transience are primary themes in Deadly – in his quest to uncover the mystery of his hitchhiker, Hammer moves literally all through the city, from downtown to Bunker Hill to Culver City, Hollywood, and finally, the beach. The sense of urgent movement is highlighted by the trick of placing the camera behind or in the back seat of Hammer’s vehicles, so that instead of always looking at the faces of driver and passenger, as in most films, the audience sees where Hammer is going and what he is headed towards – though most often, it’s a dark road.

Another kind of transience is also featured – a large number of the secondary and incidental characters sound as if they come from somewhere else. Greek, Italian, Irish, or from the American South, it seems that most of these people are transplants. What they come to Los Angeles for, however, is a question never asked, much less answered. In fact, motivations are scarce all around in Deadly. Why does Hammer embark on his quest in the first place, especially while everyone tells him not to? Was he genuinely moved by the plight of the girl he picked up? Is it a matter of pride – is he simply going after the people who made a fool of him, who made him disposable? The impossibility of ascribing a motive to Hammer’s actions may end up boiling everything down to curiosity – Hammer is an engine, driven to seek for no good reason at all, even though he must know that he won’t like what he finds.