Monday 6 July 2009

S.W.A.L.K.

Today is NATIONAL KISSING DAY - a bit inconvenient, being a Monday, but maybe it will bring a bit of unexpected enjoyment to your journeys to and from work or, indeed, at work...

Of course, there are kisses and kisses...



And, as I'm sure you know, they're not all Romeo-and-Julietesque...

Romeo and Juliet

Nevertheless, here are a few interesting facts about kissing...

The 'science' of kissing is called philematology


A one-minute kiss burns 26 calories!


The average person spends 20,160 minutes of their lifetime kissing,
which amounts to two whole weeks!



Some people say that when you smooch a person with
the same hair colour, it results in a more passionate kiss


Of course, our imaginings (and, perhaps, our expectations) of kissing have been heavily influenced by the movies, and film stars have been puckering-up pretty much from the start of the industry. In fact, the first-ever on-screen kiss was in one of the earliest films to be commercially shown.

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is a 47-second-long piece of 1896 actuality, recreating a scene from the New York stage comedy, The Widow Jones, starring May Irwin and John Rice.

According to Edison film historian, C Musser, the actors staged their kiss for the camera at the request of the New York World newspaper. The resulting film (directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison) was the most popular Edison Vitascope film in 1896, whose catalogue advertised it thus:

"They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time."

However, the film scandalized kinetoscope-goers in some places where it was screened and in some cities it was greeted with outraged newspaper editorials and calls for police action from high-minded moralists. One appalled critic spluttered: "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting."

In 1999, this shocking piece of footage was deemed so "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress that it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

And, after all that, here's what's left of the original footage that caused all that fuss...



After that, the cinema got down to the serious business of snogging and here's a rather good montage of some (but, by no means, all) of the best of the screen kissers at work...



Since there wasn't so much as a single same-sex kiss in that reel, here's Jake and Heath (aka Jack and Ennis) getting to grips with a few manly kisses on (and off) Brokeback Mountain...



And two more, strangely overlooked, kisses that are among my favourite silver screen smackers, the first of which is one of the hottest (and wettest) clinches ever filmed: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the 1953 drama, From Here to Eternity...



"How did you plan the famous kiss scene?" I once asked the film's director, Fred Zinnemann. "Oh," he replied casually, "I asked Deborah and Burt to lie on the beach and we just waited for the tide to come in..."

And, finally, one of cutest cinema kisses: though it's scarcely more than a nuzzle of the muzzle, it's part of one of the most romantic - and, OK, kitchiest - love scenes in the movies. Yes, it's that dinner-date from Disney's 1955 animated feature, Lady and the Tramp...



Incidentally, that night of discreetly depicted canine bliss in the park is the reason why, in the film's final scene Lady and Tramp are seen as having been blessed with puppies!

Anyway, I hope you get a least one kiss today - even if it's from the dog!

Images: arty kisses by Auguste Rodin, Gustav Klimt and Frank Dicksee.

14 comments:

scb said...

Somehow the phrase "prolonged pasturing on each other's lips" made me expect more than what they delivered. Guess I'm a "modern". (**SCB sings 'Have you seen the way they kiss in the movies? **)

Some of my favorite movie kisses and clinches are in The Americanization of Emily, with Julie Andrews and James Garner. Now that's prolonged pasturing.

(alas, I don't even have a dog!)

Brian Sibley said...

To be fair, the surviving clip features only about 20 of the original 47 seconds, so - whilst "prolonged pasturing" - was a bit hyperbolic, it must have seemed frightfully scandalous in 1896, especially bearing in mind just how shocking people found the concept of moving pictures.

The Americanization of Emily is a greatly underestimated film: Miss A in crisp English-rose-mode, James Garner being charmingly (and slightly bemusedly) Jimmy Stewartish and Joyce Grenfell as Julie's mother serving afternoon tea like an English mistress from an American high school for girls!

SharonM said...

I'll give Cuddles the teddy bear - the nearest I've got to a man - a big hug and kiss. Alas, he never reciprocates!

One of my favourite films is Cinema Paradiso and I seem to remember the village priest sitting watching films before they were shown and ringing a handbell everytime any passion was shown, so that it could be edited out.

Brian Sibley said...

I'm sure Cuddles reciprocates - in his fashion. Anyway, long-distance kisses to you, scb and anyone else whose kissless today!

Boll Weavil said...

Kisses are like burps. You may want to get a long, big one you created yourself but other peoples are very off-putting. The footage of the first screen kiss showed that, then, as now, women tend to talk all the way through it. I imagine that with the arrival of sound, we could have heard the lady running through her shopping list.
heffr : all the things we think of to avoid the squelching sound of an apparently necessary on-screen kiss looming out in dolby THX

Jen said...

Obviously been on the wrong diet. An hour's worth of kissing cancels out the average daily calorie count for women.
what a great way of losing weight!

SMASITAL: Balm for sore lips

Brian Sibley said...

BOLL - Do women really talk all they way through kissing (it's so long ago now, I've forgotten) and, if they do, HOW do they do that??!!

JEN - Well, now you know, I trust you're dragging Himself off into the bedroom so you can go on an immediate crash diet!

scb said...

BW obviously knows the wrong women. Talking while kissing? Reciting one's shopping list while kissing? Speaking for myself (and I am unanimous in this) I can't see just how one would do that. Nor why. Perhaps it is a reflection on the one who is the other partner in the exercise? (No, I didn't say that out loud, did I?)

Brian Sibley said...

Oo-er, I'm keeping out of this one!

Jen said...

Burt Lancaster style would be the biz but we have a pebble beach here
& we Southerners aren't known for being tough..!

GONEGIN:Empty bottle of Gordon's

Brian Sibley said...

Pity about the absence of gin - a big enough bottle would probably have deadened the discomfort caused by those pebbles...

Boll Weavil said...

Well, I have been likened to an overfilled vacuum cleaner in reverse but I took that as a compliment....

EXAGRA : A new prescription drug that can keep ones lips puckered up for HOURS...apparently

Brian Sibley said...

I knew someone who was referred to by the nickname Suck-O-Lux (after the ACME vacuum cleaner featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) and, it is said, successfully lived up to the sobriquet...

scb said...

I shouldn't have said what I said. Sorry.