Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

What should have been a much more effective film with an absorbing, sometimes gripping story, is somehow turned into a tepid melodrama interesting only for the performances of the principal players--Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine and Robert Newton.

Basically, the story has hot tempered Lancaster running from the law and seeking shelter in Fontaine's apartment. Against her better judgment, she becomes involved with him but can't protect him from a blackmailer (Robert Newton) who has witnessed Lancaster's crime. Joan Fontaine gives a surprisingly strong performance in a confrontation scene with Newton that is the most gripping moment of the film. To tell any more would be to give the rest of the plot away.

As intense as Lancaster is, it's not a very well written role--there is definitely something lacking in the screenplay. Nor is the chemistry between him and Fontaine very strong or believable. She gives one of her better performances as the woman who just happens to cross paths with a killer.

The low key lighting gives the film a grim, film noir look that is appropriate for this kind of story, as does Miklos Rozsa's score although it does not rank with some of his best work. At best, it's a routine melodrama that could have been so much more.

In post-war London, an ex-soldier hides out in a strange woman's apartment in Kiss the Blood off My Hands, a 1948 film starring Burt Lancaster Joan Fontaine, Robert Newton, and Jay Novello.

A man with violent tendencies (or perhaps PTSD), Bill Saunders (Lancaster) gets into a bar brawl and is chased by the police. He opens the window of a lonely woman, Jane (Fontaine) and stays there until the next morning. If she's scared, she manages to keep her cool.

Bill seeks her out later and convinces her to go to the races with him. While on the train going home, he gets into another brawl - and then attacks a police officer. This time, he gets a prison sentence of six months.

Upon his release, the kind-hearted Jane gets him a job as a medical supplies driver at the clinic where she works. Unfortunately for Bill, a man named Harry Carter (Robert Newton) saw the bar fight and blackmails Bill.

Harry and his gang want to steal valuable penicillin that Bill is carrying which is supposed to be administered to sick children. Bill agrees, but changes his mind, and more violence ensues.

Jane and Bill are in love, but he needs to leave town in a hurry and believes he has no place in her life. She doesn't want him to go. Soon she's up to her neck due to his difficulties.

Handsome, hunky Burt Lancaster gives an excellent performance as a man who's had no breaks and whose hair-trigger temper lands him into trouble. Joan Fontaine is lovely, with a gentle, sweet but strong nature.

Decent, atmospheric noir with performances that make it involving. It doesn't live up to its wild title. It's basically dressed up as romance.

Decent enough noir. Art directors Nathan Juran and Bernard Herzbrun and cinematographer Russell Metty do a very good job of creating a down and out London of the mind on the Universal backlot. And Lancaster and Fontaine are solid, as usual, in their roles of traumatized ex soldier (a noir staple) and lonely nurse. Screenplay is on the flat side, however, which is surprising when you consider that two of the four writers (maybe that's the problem) include Ben Maddow and Walter Bernstein, two of the better dialogue slingers in Tinseltown at the time. The other problem, also connected to the unmemorable writing, is, as the previous reviewer mentioned, a rather standard villain, essayed by the usually excellent Robert Newton. And this thing cries out for a slinky femme fatale to counter balance Fontaine's saintliness. Let's give it a generous B minus for the great visual atmospherics.

PS...As Lancaster's character was being flogged in an English prison all I could think of was "That's what you get when you don't have a written constitution with an 8th amendment".

Set in England, it features some atmospheric film noir sequences, Burt Lancaster as an American soldier who's been in a Nazi prison and has what we would now call PTSD, Joan Fontaine as the upstanding woman whose apartment he sneaks into when he's running away from the cops, and Robert Newton as a thoroughly enjoyable over-the-top villain. Did I mention Burt's shirtless scenes? His eyes are photographed extremely well; I'm not sure if he looks more handsome in any other movie, even TRAPEZE. We even see (or rather, hear) Burt being flogged as part of the English justice system.

Fontaine and Lancaster make a reasonably good romantic couple. Director Norman Foster and his cinematographer, Russell Metty, add some noir styling. I found it a very entertaining film noir plus romance. The "oops, gotta follow the Code" ending seems tacked on, but it doesn't spoil the film. Burt Lancaster fans will certainly enjoy it.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

This is a surprisingly vivid movie. Some will find the plot a little canned, a vehicle for quick appeal, not quite a B movie enterprise. But I enjoyed so much the two leads--Joan Fontaine as ever luminous and sympathetic, Burt Lancaster in his tough yet lovable best--I loved the whole movie. Furthermore it is photographed, mostly at night, with amazing fluidity and drama, another high point in the film noir style.

Though this is a British-feeling movie set in London, it is topped out with American actors and directed by an American, too. It is a great example of that American archetype known as film noir. It even has the standard core of the best of them, a returning soldier struggling to make sense of normal life. Lancaster has a past that includes two years in a Nazi prison camp. He has the mental scars to show for it (as the text at the beginning explains needlessly for the time, but maybe helpfully for a viewer now).

It is the at first highly unlikely but increasingly plausible relationship between two lonely people that commands the movie. The less compelling plot line of a somewhat stereotypical blackmailer and the associated crimes is handled well in each case, though more about action than psychological depth. You get frustrated when Lancaster never tells Fontaine what is going on in his shady moments, but that's part of his problem and we are to go along. He trusts no one for good reason.

The finale? A bit hasty, maybe, the way that other famous Fontaine thriller is ("Suspicion"), but it's satisfying, too, and not quite a "Hollywood" ending.

The director is little known Norman Foster, who made a bunch of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films in the 1930s, and the quite good "Rachel and the Stranger." Another example of how teamwork lifts even less inspired aspects higher. This has a great cast, excellent music (by the dependable romantic whiz Miklos Rozsa), and great filming (with Russell Metty behind the camera).

The hardest thing about this film is finding it. I bought a really lousy DVD copy of a lousy tape made years ago off an AMC broadcast, and even so it was terrific watching, visually. It has been broadcast on TCM and I think their version would be superior, if you can find someone who has copied it (legality aside, though it might be past copyright).

It's not a masterpiece of a film, but it looks so darned good it should be released in full Blu-Ray and now. Meanwhile, happy hunting for a better copy than mine. It's worth it!