THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997 TAG: 9702130029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 184 lines
``You must remember this:
A kiss is still a kiss; a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.''
- ``As Time Goes By,'' from ``Casablanca''
WAS SAINT VALENTINE really a saint?
If so, why on Feb. 14, his day, does he prompt these horny thoughts. The guy must have had a little of the devil in him.
It's kiss time. Webster defines it as ``a caress with the lips,'' adding a vague subnote that it is ``a gentle touch or contact.'' A little clinical, Mr. Webster, but we get the idea.
Mass expenditures for roses, candy and even varied carats of jewels are about to be poured out in search of its illusive warmth.
But some of the more demonstrative, and often not gentle, kisses of our conscious past have been experienced in the dark - in the dark of movie theaters. The big wannabe kissable movie to open this Valentine's Day is ``Fools Rush In,'' with Matthew Perry, from TV's ``Friends,'' as a New York kind of WASP guy, who falls in love with spitfire Salma Hayek in Las Vegas. Her family is Mexican, and likes bright colors and fiery rhythms. His is uppercrust-proper, and likes the correct silverware. It's tequila vs. champagne in a culture-clash love story.
``Fools Rush In,'' which seeks to be the dating flick of the long Valentine weekend, poses the sobering question: Is the love of your life worth giving up the lifestyle you love?
``Fools Rush In,'' though, faces an uphill battle capturing a place in the great kiss-time movies of the past. It's an appropriate time of year to pucker up and search the brain (a part of the anatomy that often has nothing to do with a kiss).
Here's a painfully assembled list of the Top 10 movie kisses of all time. It is, understandably, a subjective rendering. After all, as they say, different strokes for different folks, but these were the kisses that masses of us remember as if they were in 3-D.
CLARK GABLE AND VIVIEN LEIGH IN ``GONE WITH THE WIND'' - This movie has at least three major candidates for the list. There's Rhett and Scarlet at the bottom of the steps as he says something like ``You've locked me out night after night, Scarlet, while you chased Ashley Wilkes - dreamed of Ashley Wilkes, but this is one night you're not locking me out.'' But he didn't really kiss her then, did he?
No, the smackeroo that really has resounded round the world since 1939, is on the road from Atlanta, with fiery orange in the background. She pulls away from him. He says ``There's a soldier of the South who wants to love you, Scarlet, who wants to feel your arms around him, who wants to carry the memory of your kisses into battle with him. Never mind about loving me. Scarlet, kiss me. Kiss me.''
And you bet she does. You have to admit, Clark had a line. The Atlanta road was the passionate version. A more gentle edition was the peck he gave her on the forehead. The line was: ``Scarlet, look at me. I love you more than I've ever loved any woman. I've waited for you longer than I've ever waited for any woman.''
And then, right up there in pecking order, was Ashley Wilkes and Scarlet at the woodshed. ``Oh, please, Scarlet, please,'' he said. ``You mustn't cry. Please my brave dear. You mustn't.'' But, giving into weakness, Ashley (Leslie Howard) adds, afterward, ``We won't do this. It won't happen again.''
But that's three memorable kisses from one film - the champ. On to others.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR AND MONTGOMERY CLIFT IN ``A PLACE IN THE SUN'' - Director George Stevens brought the camera in so close that the young lovers looked like giants - and were super passionate to fit the closeness. He was a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks who was understandably smitten by rich-girl Liz. Just about every teen-age girl in the United States got a copy of her dress to wear to the high school prom.
AVA GARDNER AND GREGORY PECK IN ``SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO'' - They meet in a cabaret in Paris when she tells him ``I'm not anybody's woman. I'm my own woman'' as she lights one of those tobacco sticks from her home state of North Carolina. After a safari to Africa and her flirtation with a Spanish flamenco dancer, they part. Her name is Cynthia. He calls her Cyn (or is it Sin?) for short). Years later, they are reunited on the battlefield of the Spanish Civil War. She's dying as he kisses her and the stretcher bearers whisk her away. Her hand stretches out a farewell to him - and then drops. This was not Ernest Hemingway's version, but it should have been.
BURT LANCASTER AND DEBORAH KERR IN ``FROM HERE TO ETERNITY'' - Deborah Kerr was considered a proper British miss, the successor to the great-lady roles of Greer Garson, until the beach scene with Burt Lancaster. As the waves crash over their swimsuited bodies, she says ``I never knew it could be like this. Nobody ever kissed me the way you do.'' He asks, ``Nobody?'' ``No, nobody.'' she replies. ``Not even one, out of all the men you've been kissed by?'' he asked. ``Could you give me a rough estimate.'' Irritated, she replies, ``Not without an adding machine. Do you have your adding machine with you?''
LADY AND THE TRAMP IN ``LADY AND THE TRAMP'' - She, a proper cocker spaniel who is groomed and pampered, meets him, a mongrel. Their big date is in the alley of an Italian restaurant where the waiter sings a love song, ``Belle Notte'' for background. They begin at opposite ends of a strand of spaghetti, and meet in the middle. She blushes as he, as a gift token, pushes, with his nose, a meatball toward her. It's Walt Disney's most romantic coupling.
HUMPHREY BOGART AND LAUREN BACALL IN ``TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT'' She was in her early 20s and he was some 30 years older when they made their famous first scene together. It has her famous line when, in that sultry voice, she says, ``If you want something, just whistle.'' Moments later, she kisses him.
He says, ``What did you do that for?''
She says, ``I've been wondering if I'd like it.''
He says, ``What's the decision?''
She says, ``I don't know yet.'' They kiss again, and she adds, ``It's even better when you help.''
JENNIFER JONES AND GREGORY PECK IN ``DUEL IN THE SUN'' - She's a wanton half-breed Indian girl who has tried to resist him, but can't. She loves his ``good'' brother, Joseph Cotten, but she can't resist the ``bad'' brother. (It happens.) She agrees to meet him at his desert hideaway. He thinks it's a love tryst. Instead, she shoots him. He fires back. But, in a last-minute change of heart, she crawls desperately toward him. Near death, they drag themselves toward each other and die with a last kiss. Sparked by a thundering music score in the background, it was heralded, at the time, as David O. Selznick's successor to ``Gone With the Wind.'' Some smarty critic, instead, dubbed it ``Lust in the Dust.''
MARLON BRANDO AND EVA MARIE SAINT IN ``ON THE WATERFRONT'' - He breaks into her room when she refuses to unlock the door. ``Edie, Edie, you love me,'' he says. ``I didn't say I didn't love you,'' she says, ``I said stay away from me. You let your conscience tell you what to do.''
``I want you to say it to me,'' he says.
``Stay away from me,'' she says. They kiss, as they both sink to the floor.
The film won Oscars for both. It won a total of eight Oscars, including ``Best Picture.''
KATHARINE HEPBURN AND HENRY FONDA IN ``ON GOLDEN POND'' - Love has no age limits. He loses his way while he's out picking strawberries, but back at the cottage, he asks her ``Wanna dance or do you just want to suck face?''
MARILYN MONROE AND TONY CURTIS IN ``SOME LIKE IT HOT'' - He claims he has lost interest in girls. She tries to prove him wrong by kissing him. ``Was it anything?'' she asks. ``I've got a funny sensation in my toes,'' he says, ``like someone was barbecuing them over a slow flame. Where did you learn to kiss like that?'' She replies, ``I used to sell kisses for the milk fund.'' He says: ``Remind me tomorrow to sent a check for $100,000 to the milk fund.''
THAT DOESN'T LEAVE ROOM for Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in ``The Postman Always Rings Twice'' or the even steamier John Garfield and Lana Turner in the earlier version. And, more recently there was Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney in ``One Fine Day.''
Award for the ``best acting'' during a romantic kiss might go to Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in the classic ``Wuthering Heights.'' They hated each other, even though they played one of the great romantic duos in movie history. She accused him of biting her during one love scene.
It is notable that most of the ``top 10'' smooches were from vintage-classic films, not recent movies. There is an obvious reason for this. They don't make romantic movies the way they once did - at least not the ones involving kisses. Now, they skip the kisses to go straight to the R-rated things. Somehow, it was more romantic in the old movies.
Remember how the camera would pan away from the lovers to a window hitting against the lattice work. There would usually be a storm outside - and lightning would strike. It was much more effective than the current, strip immediately, version.
At this point, we have to sympathize with Grumpy, that Disney star, who commented: ``Bah! Mush!''
But, remember, even Grumpy was won over by Snow White
It was Mae West who added, later, ``I was Snow White, too. But I drifted.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh, as the legendary Rhett and Scarlet,
share one of several memorable kisses in ``Gone with the Wind''
(1939).
Photo
COLUMBIA PICTURES
Burt Lancaster and deborah kerr on the beach in ``From Here to
Eternity'' (1953)
Photo
WARNER BROS.
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart get acquainted in ``To Have and
Have Not'' (1944)
Color photo
THE WALT DISNEY CO.
``Lady and the Tramp'' share a plate of pasta (1955)