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Strangers Kiss
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Fun City Editions Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (8th September 2024). |
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The Film
 Hollywood, 1955: Director Stanley (Bitter Moon's Peter Coyote) is eager to helm his noir masterpiece about the relationship between a boxer who falls for a dancer. He and producer Farris (Strange Behavior's Dan Shor) have worked out a week-to-week funding deal with mogul Frank Silva (Mean Streets' Richard Romanus) who wants to boost the confidence of his aspiring actress girlfriend Carol (Flowers in the Attic's Victoria Tennant), so the production is able to shoot on studio sound stages so long as they keep out of the way of other bigger productions so long as they pay their weekly electricity bill. Against Farris' advice, Stanley casts Stevie Blake (Up the Creek's Blaine Novak) in the male lead, precisely because he does not look like a boxer, much less an actor while giving the supporting role of his trainer to experienced ex-boxer Esteban (Dance of the Dwarfs' Carlos Palomino). In front of the camera, Stevie seems a natural but Carol seems unsure of herself as Stanley pushes her into take after take looking for "heat" to spark between the two. In the presence of her boyfriend, however, Carol is excited by the work and looks forward to Stanley's demanding schedule. As filming carries on, Stevie starts to fall for Carol while she becomes more and more comfortable in the role of a dance hall girl caught between her rescuer and her unstable criminal boss (California Split's Vincent Palmieri). Carol's new aloofness stirs Silva's jealousy and he suspects that it is not the work that has wrested her attention from him. When Stevie becomes concerned about Carol's reluctance to tell her anything about her private life, he starts asking questions and Farris becomes conflicted over Stanley's decision to keep Carol's relationship with the producer a secret from Stevie in the interest of their onscreen chemistry. When Silva withholds funding until Farris agrees to let his "cousin" hang around the set and observe, Stanley is willing to agree to anything to finish his film but Farris suspects that Stevie and Carol will be sitting ducks in a tragedy that will occur without the cameras rolling. On the surface, Strangers Kiss is a bit of speculative fiction on the behind the scenes happenings on Stanley Kubrick's early noir effort Killer's Kiss at a time when it was consigned to television as a seeming lesser effort of a genius. Co-scripted by actor Novak and director Matthew Chapman (Heart of Midnight) – who was then in a relationship with Tennant – there is another at-the-time unacknowledged layer of backstory in Novak's experience on the set of They All Laughed, a romantic comedy effort by Peter Bogdanovich who had an affair with supporting actress and Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten whose was murdered by her estranged husband. While there is the constant threat of the same thing happening in the story, the film is more interested in exploring the character dynamics with more understated dramatics of the "real" people contrasted with the more overt melodrama of the film-within-a-film. Coyote's Kubrick stand-in is single-minded but he never answers anyone's speculation on whether there is anything else going on in his life but making movies (nor does he appear to understand their exasperation). While the film does provide a cutaway depicting Romanus' Silva as brutal and ruthless, other scenes including those with Tennant and a climactic one in the presence of one of his surprisingly sympathetic thugs depict him as more complex and conflicted, and the film leaves its resolution unnervingly ambiguous. In different ways, both Novak's Stevie and Tennant's Carol escape into their characters. Tennant's American accent is never convincing but she becomes increasingly compelling a performer as Carol gains confidence from wearing the skin of her film-within-a-film character while Stevie ending narration coming to terms with his "loss" parallels that of his character in the film (despite its more conventionally happy ending). The film's production on deferred payments and the filmmakers' constant sourcing of piecemeal funding and free services also parallels the arrangement within the film. The cinematography of Misha Suslov (Black Moon Rising) does have an appropriately "noir" look in color – clips from the film-within-a-film are in black-and-white – with much of the film shot using authentically vintage arc lights on the former Selznik and RKO studios that at the time was called Laird International and now Culver Studios while "visual consultant" J. Michael Riva (The Color Purple), art director Ginny Randolph (Lethal Weapon), and set decorator Greg Fonseca (A Nightmare on Elm Street) had access to leftover props and flats not only to give the film's studio setting a feel of period authenticity but to also believably realize the film-within-a-film's make-do sets. The saxaphone scoring of Gato Barbieri (Last Tango in Paris) suits the film's eighties retro-noir feel but only strikes a false note as musical accompaniment to a nightclub scene for the film-within-a-film (even though it is shown to us in color as long single-take that incorporates the behind the scenes goings-on rather than as a scene "from" the film). Novak's then-wife Linda Kerridge – who also played the Marilyn Monroe-lookalike love interest of an obsessed cinephile in film homage slasher Fade to Black – has a supporting role as a studio caterer caught between her unrequited romantic interest in Stevie and Stanley's offer of fame to keep her silent when she learns of the film's funding arrangement. Director Chapman later took an equally-unconventional approach to the nineties post-Basic Instinct erotic thriller take on the noir genre with The Color of Night helmed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man) and theatrically-released in a version that played things straight and seemed awkwardly-executed while the later video director's cut revealed that the film was always conceived as a black comedy. 
Video
Strangers Kiss was released by Orion Classics in 1984 and then on Thorn/EMI Home Video, which makes it fitting that its U.S. digital debut is from Fun City Editions who have patterned the artwork of a number of their releases on the Thorn/EMI front and back cover layouts; indeed, the reverse cover artwork uses the same still as the VHS work and the same critical blurb without being an exact copy. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer from a new 4K scan of the 35mm internegative. There is a certain deliberate softness and natural diffusion in the some of the available light exteriors and interiors while close-ups reveal texture in clothing and hair and detail in faces with the "glamour treatment" largely reserved for the black-and-white clips apart from some scenes during the production where Tennant reveals she had developed a rash on her face from playing with a dog. 
Audio
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track sports generally audible dialogue, although clarity varies depending on the level of voices within the frame with director Stanley sometimes murmuring to producer Farris or foreground conversation behind the camera dominating background action in front of the camera. Sound design is supportive but it is Barbieri's score that is usually the loudest thing on the soundtrack. Optional English SDH subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by film historian Walter Chaw who provides background on Bogdanovich, Stratten, and They All Laughed, Novak's involvement with Bogdanovich by way of his earlier experience in film distribution – although Novak co-wrote the film, he gave up his credit in favor of an "introducing" billing for his role in the film as an actor – and the aftermath including Bogdanovich's litigious book account of Stratten's life and death "The Killing of the Unicorn" and Bob Fosse's film Star 80. He also discusses recurring elements in Chapman's filmography as well as the Kubrick film while also noting that Strangers Kiss is as much a "Vertigo confessional." In "Comradeship and Love" (24:36), co-writer/director Chapman discusses his early film-making career in England including Hussy based on his experience of London clubs. He reveals that he and Tennant were in Hollywood while she was promoting the miniseries The Winds of War when they met Novak and his business partner Doug Dilg at a party where they discussed the Kubrick film and Novak pitched the idea. Chapman also reveals that another project with producer Michael White (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) had fallen through earlier and he brought White onto the show. He also recalls the resources of the Laird studio which was entirely unbooked in anticipation of a union strike. In "It Felt Magical" (23:58), actress Tennant also recalls the impetus of the project and their quartet's methods of sourcing services and funding by night while shooting the film during the day (including free catering by a swanky sushi restaurant). She also relates memories about working with Novak, Coyote, and Shor as well as shooting on the Laird sound stages and cinematographer Suslov having to light her in a way to hide the make-up used to cover up the skin rash she contracted early in the shoot.  "An Enemy of Cliche" (24:28) is an interview with co-writer/actor Novak who discusses his experiences in film distribution, partnering with Dilg, and their specialty of mediating between production and distribution – including trying to get Paramount to agree to Bernardo Bertolucci's desire to distribute his five-hour 1900 as a two-parter theatrically, working with Jack Nicholson on Goin' South through whom he met Bogdanovich. He recalls his experiences on They All Laughed, Bogdanovich's obsession with Stratten, their learning of her murder in the editing room, Bogdanovich transferring his obsession with the actress to the prolonged editing of the film and its reception. He then recalls seeing the Kubrick film on the Z-Channel and pondering how the genius Kubrick made a not-so-good film, meeting Chapman and Tennant, Bogdanovich trying to stop the film, and the method of funding the shooting via deferred payments which got the production some press. "Distributor to Producer" (32:33) is an interview with producer Dilg who began in non-theatrical distribution, meeting Novak, their experiences mediating between Paramount on the west coast and Gulf+Western on the east coast, how They All Laughed derailed their career trajectory, and an account of the film at hand with more of an emphasis on his role as a producer with some more information on the deferred payment funding. "Stanley's Film" (9:40) is a video essay by film historian Chris O'Neill that focuses on the connections between the film and the Kubrick film, the parallels between the characters and their real life counterparts – principally Coyote's Stanley and Shor's Farris – while deliberately leaving out discussion of the Bogdanovich film and its behind the scenes stories. The disc also includes the theatrical trailer (2:37) and an image gallery (2:23). 
Packaging
Housed with the disc is a booklet with a new essay by Peter Tonguette who discusses the film in the context of movies about the movies and the daring decision to set their speculative fiction within "something like actual cinema history." The first pressing also includes a slipcover designed by Jackson Phillips featuring the new art that is also on the front of the reversible cover while exclusively available directly from Fun City Editions is a limited edition with the booklet, the aforementioned slipcover, and a website-exclusive slipcover with with legacy artwork, design and layout by Scott Saslow.
Overall
A piece of speculative fiction about a real film noir film, Strangers Kiss does a dangerous dance with reality as "heat" in front of the camera spills off the screen.
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