William Heise’s “The Kiss“—the very first movie kiss in history, which raised the hackles of cultural censors such as the ‘Catholic Legion of Decency’—is the least erotic, most pedestrian consensual coupling I have ever seen. The morally constipated pearl-clutchers who decried this peck on the lips as the first crack in the crumbling wall of polite society had clearly not visited the Nickelodeons that were appearing all over the U.S. in the 1890s like crocuses in the Spring. There they would have seen hootchy-kootchy girls, naked people walking up and down stairs, butt-cheek baring boxing matches, and bodybuilders aplenty. The wall had long since crumbled when they weren’t looking.
The Industrial Revolution and corporatization of America brought waves of impoverished immigrants to swell the working class. These people who eked out the minuteness of livings craved entertainment just as much as the swells who frequented the live theaters of The Great White Way. Movies like “The Kiss” drew their hard-earned pennies out of their pockets. At the Nickelodeon and later in a room with a sheet pinned to the wall, they could watch a thrilling menu of nano-movies, which was replaced weekly with new offerings.
“The Kiss” is an 18-second excerpt from the popular Broadway play, “The Widow Jones,” starring May Irwin and John Rice. The film reinforced the Victorian fear of kissing in public, which had already been raised by the play where a kiss was committed on-stage. But the tide was turning and “The Kiss” was hit.
The tug-of-war between censors and filmmakers, ignited by “The Kiss,” was on-going until the sexual revolution of the mid-20th Century. Even in the ‘Pre-Code Era’ of Hollywood, kisses were remarkably chaste. And once the ‘Hays Code’ was fully enforced, where closed-mouth, static kisses could not be more than three seconds long, filmmakers built a cipher of images that audiences in the know could decode. Watch the cigarette lighting scene from “Now Voyager” to see what I mean.
“The Kiss” is a 5-star movie for its historical importance, not for its enjoyability. “Something Good” (1898) is a 24-second long first kiss on film by a Black couple. Also, check out “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), an Italian film about censorship, kissing, and life in a small Italian town.
You can watch “The Kiss” in its 18-second entirety here:
