The next film in our series exploring modernism in the movies, Robert Aldrich’s acerbic 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, will screen at the end of the Lawrence Arts Center’s Free State Film Festival on June 30th. Lawrence Modern’s in-house film buff Kellee Pratt will once again introduce the film, followed by a virtual Q&A with noted biographer and author Alan K. Rode, a frequent presenter at the TCM Classic Film Festival, Noir City Hollywood and Chicago film festivals.
A fever dream of seduction and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Kiss Me Deadly was easily the most enigmatic film to come out of Hollywood in the 1950s. The plotline is delightfully cryptic: private investigator Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) has a line on something big, but he can’t quite figure out what it is. (His loyal aide and part-time lover Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it the “Great Whatsit.”) A philandering, penny-ante gumshoe, Hammer finds himself at the center of a complex web of intrigue that includes the cops, the feds, the Mafia, and a mysterious glowing box hidden in a locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Mike zooms around midcentury L.A. in a shiny new Corvette trying to stitch it all together, cracking heads and smashing vinyl records, taking us on a wild and crazy ride at breakneck speed. There is no other film noir quite like it, and fewer still have left such a lasting impression. The film inspired a generation of filmmakers—François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard cited Deadly as one of the biggest influences on the French New Wave—and movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Repo Man, and Pulp Fiction have paid homage to it.
“‘Kiss Me Deadly’ represents a cultural crossroad where classic film noir experienced a cinematic head-on collision with Cold War paranoia,” Rode writes. “The essential private eye created by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler evolved into A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Aldrich’s brutally magnified vision of Mickey Spillane’s atomic age sleuth Mike Hammer. Star Ralph Meeker’s scorched earth sojourn through a crumbling, post-World War II Los Angeles is unforgettable cinema.”
Please join us at the Lawrence Arts Center on June 30th to enjoy this apocalyptic noir in the comfort and safety of an air-conditioned theater. Tickets can be purchased here.
Big thanks to Alan K. Rode for supporting our film series. Special thanks to the Lawrence Arts Center for collaborating with us and generously programming us into this year’s festival.
Kiss Me Deadly trailer | Criterion Collection review | Free State FF tickets | Alan K. Rode bio
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