Top 10 Screen Kisses (1896-1979)

In our Valentine special, we focussed on the famous kissing montage in Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso. We reckon three-time Oscar winner Burt Bacharach had it right with the song 'What the World Needs Now'. So, as we could all do with a bit of love, sweet love in these dark February days, we're going to look back at the greatest kisses in screen history.

Everyone remembers in Cinema Paradiso (1988) how Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste) would instruct Alfredo the projectionist (Philippe Noiret) to remove any kissing or scenes of a sexual nature from the films that played at Giancaldo's little cinema. Some of those caresses feature in this survey of screen smooching from the first flickerings of the moving image to the dawn of the blockbuster era. But there are so many memorable moments here that Father Adelfio would be get bell-ringer's wrist.

Silent Embraces

Lips have been locking on film since 1896, when May Irwin and John Rice caused moral outrage by recreating for Thomas Edison's camera the embrace from their Broadway hit, The Widow Jones. Known as The Rice-Irwin Kiss, this 20-second piece of screen history can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of Charles Musset's Before the Nickelodeon (1982). Another BFI release, Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers (2005), is the place to go for both G.A. Smith and the Bamforth Company versions of The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), which anticipate by 60 years the suggestive sauciness of Alfred Hitchcock's climactic train-board clench between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest (1959).

The silent era had its share of celebrated kisses, with the most disreputable seeing dentist Gibson Gowland take advantage of Zasu Pitts when she was under anaesthetic in Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924). Nothing could match the 191 smackers that Alan Crosland supposedly squeezed into Don Juan or the passion of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert's open-mouthed kiss in Clarence Brown's Flesh and the Devil. But Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky also drew gasps for the ferocity of their encounters in The Son of the Sheik (all 1926), which explains why it caught the eye of Father Adelfio!

The corrupting kisses of city slicker Margaret Livingston lure George O'Brien away from wife Janet Gaynor in F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. But Gaynor's tenderness wins O'Brien back, just as her devotion to Charles Farrell would earn her a deeply romantic embrace at the end of Frank Borzage's 7th Heaven (both 1927). No wonder Gaynor won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances.

When not tangoing with a lesbian countess in evening dress, kissing get Louise Brooks into trouble throughout G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). But, even though she comes face to face with Jack the Ripper, this didn't shock as much as the lingering farewell that Charles 'Buddy' Rogers gives dying friend Richard Arlen in William A. Wellman's Wings (1927). This was the first all-male kiss in Hollywood history, but it didn't stop this Great War drama from taking Best Picture at the first Oscar ceremony.

Charlie Chaplin had kissed Edna Purviance while she was disguised as a boy in the 1916 slapstick short, Behind the Screen, which can be found on Volume One of Charlie Chaplin: The Mutual Comedies (2008). Chaplin would resist sound until the mid-1930s, as he and Virginia Cherrill kissed each other's hands in City Lights (1931). More notoriously, Lya Lys sucked a statue's toes in sensual frustration in Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'or (1930), after lover Gaston Modot had been called away in the midst of a tryst.

Kissing and the Snooping Censor

Talkies made kissing all the more realistic on screen, although the Production Code Office was keen to ensure that any smooching sounds or heavy breathing were toned down. Prior to 1934, however, the Code administrators let the odd thing through, most notably Marlene Dietrich kissing a woman while wearing a tuxedo and top hat in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930).

Father Adelfio was having none of the kissing between Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in Frank Borzage's take on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and one can only presume he didn't get to see the mirror kisses between Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (both 1932), which also included a daring shot of their shadows embracing on a pillow case.

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow demonstrated plenty of passion in their kissing scenes in Red Dust (1932) and Hold Your Man (1933). But frustratingly few MGM pictures from this period have been released on disc in the UK. Cinema Paradiso audiences can, however, see lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Young letting her emotions get the better of her in kissing Greta Garbo on the lips in Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1933). Courtier John Lodge made his feelings equally plain during several adulterous kisses with Marlene Dietrich's Catherine the Great of Russia in Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934), with one embrace involving a veil being particularly sensual.

The pecks between amateur sleuths Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) are more indulgently playful in W.S. Van Dyke's The Thin Man (1934). But there is real ardour in the shower of kisses with which Armand Duvall (Robert Taylor) covers the upturned face of Marguerite Gautier in George Cukor's adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's Camille. You'll also need your hankie at the ready for the goodbye kiss between Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur) and Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper) in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman. But it's your wits you'll need to keep about you, as Viennese lawyer Frank Morgan gains crucial insight into a murder case on being rebuffed by flirtatious wife Nancy Carroll in James Whale's A Kiss Before the Mirror (all 1936).

Not content with having the handsome prince break the spell with a kiss, Walt Disney also had Dopey get a taste for farewell pecks in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Olivia De Havilland and Errol Flynn overstepped the mark, however, (twice in Fr Adelfio's eyes) in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). We also don't think he would have approved of Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) forcing himself upon Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind or the adulterous kiss across the class divide between heiress Nora Gregor and her louche friend, Jean Renoir, in the latter's classic study of France dancing on the edge of a volcano, La Règle du jeu (both 1939).

But even the 'restful' kisses Melvyn Douglas gives Greta Garbo in Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) would have set the little bell tinkling. The cleric may even have uttered the Italian equivalent of 'Golly, Moses' on seeing the effect that reporter James Stewart's fervent embrace has upon socialite Katharine Hepburn in George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940). However, he was most unlikely to have repeated the phrase used by gangster's moll Barbara Stanwyck after she gives grammarian Gary Cooper three kisses to teach him the meaning of the term 'yum yum' in Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941).

Stanwyck's swindler turns bashful heir Henry Fonda's head with similar frankness in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve (1941) to the extent that he doesn't realise that she's the same woman who had earlier impersonated a blue blood to seduce him. Humphrey Bogart treated Mary Astor and Ingrid Bergman to kisses that likewise stopped them in their respective tracks in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942). But he was on the receiving end of a lesson in osculation (or does she really mean whistling) from Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (1944) before planting a smacker Bacall's bouche in the same director's noir classic, The Big Sleep (1946).

The lighting of two cigarettes serves as a prelude to the soft kiss between married Paul Henreid and fellow cruise passenger Bette Davis in Irving Rapper's Now, Voyager. But the kisses prove to be the preamble to a reunion, as Joel McCrea seeks to persuade Claudette Colbert to ditch her divorce plans in Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story (both 1942). Also that year, George Stevens had teacher Jean Arthur use a kiss to choose between law professor Ronald Colman and scoundrel Cary Grant in The Talk of the Town before he directed Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy's first screen kiss in the back of a taxi in Woman of the Year.

The desperate fervour of the kisses between lovers Clara Calamai and Massimo Girotti in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1942) would have perplexed the Code Office as much as Father Adelifio, especially as the lovers are about to murder her husband. Similar reservations would have arisen over Lana Turner and John Garfield's embraces in Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Each film drew on a steamy novel by James M. Cain, while an Émile Zola tome informed the murderous plottings of Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in Jean Renoir's La Bête humaine (1938) and Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame in Fritz Lang's Hollywood remake, Human Desire (1954). In each picture, a kiss leads to crime and the same goes for Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray's clench in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) and for Kathleen Turner and William Hurt's naked passion in Lawrence Kasdan's raunchy reboot, Body Heat (1981).

On a more chaste note, a blown kiss by courtesan Arletty sets mime Jean-Louis Barrault's heart fluttering in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis. The displays of affection are even more restrained, as a couple of middle-aged bourgeois Brits are drawn together at a railway station. But housewife Celia Johnson and doctor Trevor Howard convey genuine feelings through their furtive kisses in David Lean's Brief Encounter (both 1945), while also fighting back a sense of guilt at their clandestine affair. But it's easy to see why King Vidor's Duel in the Sun earned the nickname 'Lust in the Dust' from the ferocity of the kisses that rancher's son Gregory Peck forces on biracial Jennifer Jones. Clearly, this neo-Western didn't reach Giancaldo. But Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (both 1946) did and the local priest took twofold exception to the embraces between James Stewart and Donna Reed.

John Wayne comes to regret leaving Coleen Gray at home after their parting kiss in Howard Hawks's Red River (1948). But femme fatale Peggy Cummins's powers of persuasion are much more effective, as she uses her wiles to coax John Dall into a life of crime in Joseph H. Lewis's noir gem, Gun Crazy (1949), which had a considerable influence on the lovers on the run saga involving Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (1960).

Whole Lotta Kissin' Goin' On

Although the Production Code remained in force, its all-encompassing potency was diminished after Otto Preminger's romantic comedy, The Moon Is Blue (1953), was released without the mandatory seal of approval after it had been censured for the use of banned words like 'virgin'. As rock'n'roll further shook America's moral edifice and the cinema-going demographic became more youthful, film-makers started pandering to an audience that was no longer willing to conform or accept that the state knew best. Such shifts were reflected in the avidity and duration of screen kisses. But the 1950s started out under the old rules.

Indeed, there was something quaint about the way in which William Holden kisses Nancy Olson on the nose after she reveals she's had plastic surgery in Billy Wilder's Hollywood saga, Sunset Boulevard (1950) and about the exhilarated embrace between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn after they survive a skirmish with a German ship in John Huston's The African Queen. Bogie proves equally gentlemanly in luring Audrey Hepburn away from dashing younger brother William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954).

But it was impossible to escape the sense of innocence being corrupted while watching Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift defy class convention to canoodle on a balcony in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun or when seeing the lingering kiss that Oscar winner Vivien Leigh plants on the lips of delivery boy Wright King in Elia Kazan's landmark adaptation of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (all 1951).

There was a fire that not even a storm could douse in the illicit embraces between John Wayne's boxer and Maureen O'Hara's Inisfree colleen in John Ford's Best Picture comedy, The Quiet Man (1952). But there was no holding back the tide after Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr romped in the surf in one of the most iconic clinches in screen history. Yet the ardour soon cools in Fred Zinnemann's Best Picture-winning adaptation of James Jones's bestseller, From Here to Eternity (1953), when Lancaster's army sergeant concludes that he's just one of many conquests when Kerr's captain's wife declares, 'Nobody ever kissed me the way you do.'

Princess Audrey Hepburn and journalist Gregory Peck part on better terms with a fond embrace after an idyllic escape from conformity in William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953). But there's anguish of a different kind in the kiss against a wall between Marlon Brando's dockworker and Eva Marie Saint's grieving sister in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), which earned Oscars for both stars, as well as the award for Best Picture.

Alfred Hitchcock recognised the power of a screen kiss and used Grace Kelly's playful smooching with incapacitated photographer James Stewart in Rear Window (1954) and cracksman Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955) to show how game she was for adventure. By contrast, Kim Novak's embraces with cop James Stewart are more guarded, as she strives to hide a secret in Vertigo (1958).

Socialite Jean Wallace is also keen to keep out of the clutches of gangster Richard Conte in Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo. But she proves unable to resist in a Code-busting sequence, in which he nibbles her ear and starts working his way down her body. When confronted by amorous gambler Marlon Brando in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Guys and Dolls (both 1955), however, urban missionary Jean Simmons gives as good as she gets by returning his enforced kiss with a slap across the face.

Despite the title, Ralph Meeker and Gaby Rodgers don't actually do the deed in Robert Aldrich's take on Mickey Spillane's pulp classic, Kiss Me Deadly. But James Dean follows up a hesitant brush on Natalie Wood's forehead with a full-on smacker after realising that they'll never be alone again during an assignation at the mansion near the Los Angeles planetarium in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (both 1955). The same venue would notably be used for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling's trip to the stars in Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016).

This was a busy year for momentous smooches, as William Holden proposed to Kim Novak with a kiss in Joshua Logan's Picnic and Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi spark a firework display over Venice with their embraces in David Lean's Summertime. But Tom Ewell's efforts to seduce neighbour Marilyn Monroe after they play 'Chopsticks' on the piano merely results in them tumbling on to the floor in without him managing to kiss her 'very quickly and very hard' in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (all 1955).

Kevin McCarthy has his worst fears realised when he kisses a sleepy Dana Wynter and the awful truth dawns in Don Siegel's sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The emotion behind the kiss couldn't be more different following Cary Grant's discovery of the shattering reason why Deborah Kerr had failed to keep their rendezvous atop the Empire State Building in Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957). However, the shock reverberates around an entire Mexican border town when narcotics officer Charlton Heston and new bride Janet Leigh kiss for the first time in an hour just as an explosion rips through Los Robles in the ingenious opening long take in Orson Welles's masterly noir, Touch of Evil (1958).

Three gentlemen discover that kissing is 'better when two people do it' in our next 50s features. Sheriff John Wayne takes some convincing that there's more to saloon gal Angie Dickinson than her talent for cheating at cards in Howard Hawks's Western, Rio Bravo, while songwriting playboy Rock Hudson (who is posing as a timid Texan) has to feign surprise at just how nice kissing can be with interior decorator Doris Day in Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk. Adopting his second disguise of the film (as a philemaphobic oil tycoon), musician Tony Curtis pretends to feel nothing when Marilyn Monroe (his bandmate in an all-girl jazz combo) attempts to convert him to kissing in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (all 1959).

Kissing the Code Goodbye

Hollywood would finally ditch the Production Code in favour of a ratings system in 1968. But it had been under pressure for some time, as films Vittorio De Sica's Miracle in Milan (1951) and Ingmar Bergman's Summer With Monika (1952), as well as such British realist dramas as Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1962) smuggled evolving European attitudes to moral issues past the US censor. However, studio-backed items like Some Like It Hot, Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1964), and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) were released without the PCA certificate and their commercial success convinced Tinseltown's front offices that the time had come to move with the times.

At the start of the decade, however, PCA chief Eric Johnson continued to act like a latterday Father Adelfio. That said, he let through moments like hooker Shirley Jones's treacherous kiss with bogus brimstone preacher Burt Lancaster in Richard Brooks's Elmer Gantry (1960). Moreover, each star won an Academy Award for their performance. Struggling writer George Peppard looked like he was going to be no more successful in trying to prevent free spirit Audrey Hepburn from leaving him before they shared a kiss in the rain to the strains of 'Moon River' in Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

Those appalled by young Martin Stephens asking governess Deborah Kerr for a goodnight kiss in Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) would not have been placated by the cheek brush that underage Sue Lyon gives James Mason on her way up to bed in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's notorious novel, Lolita. Then there are the far from motherly kisses with which Angela Lansbury smothers son Laurence Harvey in John Frankenheimer's political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate (both 1962).

Refuge from the scandalising can be found in Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story (1961), as Polish-American Richard Beymer and Puerto Rican Natalie Wood have their first kiss at the gymnasium dance. This musical was derived, of course, from a Shakespeare play and both Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey and Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes would respectively discover the thrill of first love in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) before Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler would reprise the roles of Tony and Maria in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story (2021).

According to the narrator of François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), Henri Serre and Jeanne Moreau share a first kiss that lasts all night long. The embraces didn't seem to stop in Andy Warhol's Kiss (1963), which anticipates Cinema Paradiso's montage by having various couples embrace for around three minutes each. Sean Connery might have learnt a little kissing etiquette from this Factory featurette, as he is anything but civil in his embraces either as James Bond with Daniela Bianchi's Tania Romanova in Terence Young's From Russia With Love (1963) and with Honor Blackman's Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. However, he was beyond reprehensible as Mark Rutland forces his attentions on Tippi Hedren's traumatised wife, Mary Edgar, in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (both 1964).

Despite the swinging nature of the 1960s, innocence still occasionally cropped up on screen. Songwriter Ray Walston, for example. is baffled as to why crooner Dean Martin is singing one of his songs on the television. But wife Felicia Farr (who has a guilty secret to hide) distracts him with the famous final line that provided the title for Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid. There's less chicanery behind the charming alleyway kiss between shopgirl Catherine Deneuve and mechanic Nino Castelnuovo in Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (both 1964) or the adorable gazebo embrace between Charmian Carr's Liesl von Trapp and Daniel Truhitte's Rolfe Gruber in Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965). Of course, novice nun Maria (Julie Andrews) is no more experienced when she kisses Liesel's father (Christopher Plummer) during their duet on 'Something Good'.

Manners maketh the man, as Charlton Heston's astronaut demonstrates in asking Dr Zira (Kim Hunter) for a goodbye kiss on the beach in Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968). And she reciprocates in managing to overcome her misgivings, in spite of the fact she finds her favourite human 'so damned ugly'. Insurance investigator Faye Dunaway suppresses her suspicions of millionaire Steve McQueen long enough to indulge in a Code-defying 70-second snog after the most suggestive game of chess in cinema history in Norman Jewison's crime caper, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Diana Rigg and George Lazenby also get through plenty of canoodling as Countess Teresa Di Vicenzo and James Bond in Peter R. Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Their most poignant kiss, however, is shared through the window of 007's car on their wedding day, as the new Mrs Bond holds a flower between her teeth. If you don't know what happens next, you need to order this underrated series entry from Cinema Paradiso right now.

Smooching in the Seventies

Now able to express themselves freely, Hollywood film-makers mostly adopted a mature approach towards matters sexual. Arthur Hiller used tasteful nudity, for example, to show preppy Ryan O'Neal and music student Ali MacGraw in bed together in Love Story (1970). But the simplicity of their first embrace on the Harvard campus and the giddy joy of their snow kisses left a much deeper impression. Similarly, the slow-dance kisses between war widow Jennifer O'Neill and teenager Garry Grimes are much more poignant than the ensuing bedroom scene in Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 (1971).

Changes in the law made it possible for John Schlesinger to show Jewish doctor Peter Finch and sculptor Murray Head kissing in Sunday Bloody Sunday. But any form of physical contact has been outlawed in the futuristic world created by George Lucas in THX 1138 (both 1971). Consequently, robot worker Robert Duvall is jailed for kissing and impregnating roommate Maggie McOmie. Science might have deemed sexual congress to be pointless in 2173, but rebel Woody Allen is prepared to convince poet Diane Keaton otherwise (even if it does make him nauseous), as they experiment with a last-reel embrace in the classic comedy, Sleeper (1973).

Although things take a disconcertingly dark turn, there's a mutual intensity to the first kiss between Marlon Brando and Maria Schrader in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), a provocative study of sexual coercion whose reputation has been much damaged by revelations about Schrader's on-set exploitation. There has also been much speculation about how far Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland went to achieve connubial authenticity in the infamous love-making sequence in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973).

Not every embrace has to be passionate, however, as young son Jay Mello proves in cheering up stressed father Roy Scheider with a peck on the cheek in a quieter moment of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). The same year, however, the kisses proved deadly in David Cronenberg's classic body horror, Shivers, as Barbara Steele passes a parasite to Susan Petrie in a most unneighbourly manner. But the kiss between fugitive CIA agent Robert Redford and photographer hostage Faye Dunaway signifies the trust they decide to place in each other in Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor, one of a series of paranoid thrillers produced in Hollywood in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

As it celebrated its bicentennial, the United States started to feel slightly better about itself. Hence, John G. Avildsen's underdog saga, Rocky (1976), won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Among its numerous iconic scenes is the first kiss between boxer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and shy pet shop worker, Adrianna Pennino (Talia Shire). Stallone landed an early break in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971) and they succeeded each other in the Best Picture stakes when Allen won for Annie Hall (1977). Playing neurotic writer Alvy Singer, he asks Annie (Diane Keaton) for a kiss before they have dinner to avoid any awkwardness later on their first date.

A corned beef sandwich is the sole witness to Allen and Keaton's embrace in Manhattan, when he tries to take her by surprise in an attempt to be cool. Isabelle Adjani is the one catching Klaus Kinski unawares in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (both 1979), as she lures him into giving her a vampire kiss on the neck as the sun rises.

This is a remake of F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece, Nosferatu (1922), which is widely regarded as the first vampire film. Bela Lugosi would be the first to play Bram Stoker's count in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931). But it wasn't until Hammer depicted Christopher Lee necking in Terence Fisher's Dracula (1958) that vampire kisses were eroticised.

Noel Willman assumed the guise of Count Ravna to seduce Jennifer Daniel in Don Sharp's Kiss of the Vampire (1963), while Ingrid Pitt essayed Carmilla Karnstein in Roy Ward Baker's The Vampire Lovers (1970), which acted as a mid-post in lesbian horror between Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter (1936), Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness (1971), and Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983). There are lots more vampire kisses to be discovered at Cinema Paradiso. Use the search line to find out more.