I love this movie so much

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Armed robber Victor Mature (Nick) is pressed by Assistant D.A. Brian Donlevy (D'Angelo) to co-operate and rat out his gang. Mature keeps a steely resolve not to shop anyone but he's a criminal with a heart and a wife and two kids. When his wife takes her own life, his drive to look after his daughters sends him back to Donlevy where he squeals in a deal that will mean him taking the stand in court to put away fellow gangster and friend Richard Widmark (Tommy). The plan doesn't work and Widmark is a psycho after revenge.The film starts well with a robbery at a shopping store. It plays out in near silence and you can feel the tension as the gangsters descend in the lift to make their getaway. Will they make it out of the shop before the alarm is raised? If only the lift didn't keep stopping at every other floor. You find yourself willing Mature and his gang to get away with things. In fact, it's a credit to Mature as the audience sympathizes with him throughout the film. He's a bad guy but he's likable. The way the film ends is also memorable as Mature's plan is totally not what I expected.A lot of positive comments are directed at Widmark's debut and his giggling lunatic. He's OK. I think his diction in this film is dreadful. What is he saying? What kind of accent is that? Speak properly, Widmark. Acting honours go to Mature. Between the beginning and the end, we spend maybe a little too much time with Mature doting on his daughters. Children aren't interesting in films and the parental instinct is a pretty boring one to watch, so some of this should have been cut from the film. What happens in the end? Anybody know? Is Mature dead or alive?

Unable to find a job in New York City due to an extensive criminal past, Victor Mature (as Nick Bianco) goes Christmas Eve shopping for a fortune in jewels. He is caught and convicted. An understanding assistant district attorney, Brian Donlevy (as Louie D'Angelo), offers Mr. Mature a deal - if he squeals on escaped pals, Mature can get out of jail and be a father for his two preteen daughters. He repeatedly refuses, but problems with his children force Mature to reconsider. When his wife Maria sticks her head in the oven, Mature is ready to "play ball." But he must also deal with the underworld reaction...With his wickedly snickering overbite, Richard Widmark (as Thomas "Tommy" Udo) makes an impressive film debut. He received much-deserved nominations as "Best Supporting Actor" of the year from the "Film Daily" and "Academy Awards" groups, and he won the "Golden Globes" newcomer award. Don't miss what Mr. Widmark does to wheelchair-bound Mildred Dunnock. Also enjoyable is overshadowed sleazy lawyer Taylor Holmes (as Earl Howser)...Mature scores as a noble man who loves his children. Many criminals would give up the goods to spend time on the outside with pretty young babysitter Coleen Gray (as Nettie); apparently, the police did not know about this affair. The script, by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, is nicely peppered with realism. Cinematographer Norbert Brodine and director Henry Hathaway make excellent use of the locations. Yet, there is too subjective an objectivity, with a feeling details are missing. Some of this absence has been addressed in re-makes, but the efforts failed to capture all that makes this "Kiss of Death" engaging.******** Kiss of Death (8/13/47) Henry Hathaway ~ Victor Mature, Richard Widmark, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray

Sometimes you have to reflect a bit on the world of the film. Most of the time you just know and the encounter is all brute force.This is a solid crime drama, one of the most bleak (forget the wistful ending, you just know it was meddled with for the Code). A straight- up crook has to turn stoolie to be re-united with his two daughters, in doing so gets a new family, a new lease of life, but the plot backfires late in the night and a psychotic mobster will be looking for him and his daughters.Richard Widmark in his screen debut is just delicious to watch, a seething mass of barely contained violence and twitching nerves. He was so good he spawned real-life imitators in the mob.But this also goes for a film noir vibe, at least by token of the period it was made. It gets shadows right and has that gritty sense of place - actual New York streets - but is a bit off on certain characteristics I deem as quite defining of a good noir.The engine per the noir model, is that our man wanted to go straight but the world refused him, refused him because he had a record, all this is narrated to us on the way to a job that goes wrong, and he had a record it is mused because of a certain childhood scene with his no-good father. So the tracks were already laid-out for him long ago and he's merely being pushed along by learned instinct - you may note this as fate.Ideally in a film noir, dark impulse - usually personified in the femme fatale - is so overwhelming, so clouds perception, that reality itself begins to feel like it's being rewritten into a kind of nightmare. Incidental to this are the dreamlike perturbations in the world of the film, the frequently-met trope of a story being invented, a fiction in place of the real thing, and the illusion of fate, all of them key noir elements.The woman here is pure as the driven snow, perhaps this small detail exemplifies all the difference. The impulse is to do the right thing, our man serving justice.But we still have the solid crime drama and two memorable performers in the leads.

No need to recap the plot. At first I thought those lovey-dovey scenes with Mature and Gray were just Hollywood working in a woman's angle in a man's picture. But, no, they're necessary for building the tension, so thick by movie's end, you can cut it with the proverbial knife. After all, what could be sweeter than the two little daughters and Gray, on one hand, and the pathologically sadistic Widmark, on the other. As a result, we understand why Mature risks life and limb to get the madman before he gets the little family.Also, the tension really works because we know Widmark's nutcase would slice-and-dice Santa, given half a chance. Just the thought of pain sends him into maniacally drooling giggles. Watch his girlfriend freeze up in fear when he even hints at anger. His world is divided into two, either Big Men or Squirts, and we know what happens to the latter. In fact, Udo's one of the most memorable of all Hollywood psychos and a really shuddery movie debut for otherwise nice guy, Widmark.It's also a good tight screenplay from Hecht-Lederer, the scenes building effectively on one another and the location filming. Note also, how they manage to sneak in the brief bordello ("perfume") scene at a time when such was taboo. Mature too, is surprisingly effective as the reformed crook, his scenes with the little girls conveying genuine emotion. And was there ever a slipperier mob lawyer than the great Taylor Holmes, one of those unsung personalities who always added color to whatever they were in. I guess my only gripe is the ending. Okay, I'll give the screenplay the implausible trap that Nick sets since it's so nerve-wracking. But five shots into Nick at point blank range, only to be hauled away to recovery. Come on! Five is just too many to survive. My guess is the reassuring voice-over from wife Nettie (Gray) was at the insistence of the censors. Nonetheless, the movie furnishes one of the best crime dramas of the decade and grist for a thousand celebrity impersonations.