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The Kiss
The Kiss
Directed by	William Heise
Based on	The Widow Jones; 1895 Broadway musical; by John J. McNally
Starring	May Irwin; John Rice
Distributed by	Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Release date	April 1896;
Running time	18 seconds
Country	United States
Language	silent

Full film

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is an 1896 film, and was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. Around 18 seconds long, it depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical The Widow Jones. The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison. The film was produced in April 1896 at the Edison Studios of Edison, the first film studio in the United States. At the time, Edison was working at the Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey.

In 1999, the short was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.^[1]^[2]

Cast

May Irwin as Widow Jones
John Rice as Billie Bikes

Production

The film was one of the last shot at Edison's Black Maria.^[3]

Release

According to Charles Musser the film was released in either April or May 1896,^[4] and was publicized in a sponsored article in the New York World about actors kissing on stage. The article discussed the controversy surrounding onstage kissing and, along with an illustration of the Irwin and Rice kiss, referred readers to The Widow Jones and the Edison film. The campaign sought to bring attention to the newspaper, play, and movie all at once.^[3] The film was shown during demonstrations of the Vitascope.^[5]

Charles Frohman was initially against the film, stating that "I shall have to consider replacing Miss Irwin" in The Widow Jones, but then asked for Edson Raff to have advertising for the short include that Irwin was the star of The Widow Jones.^[6]

The film was sold to exhibitors for $7.50 ($232 in 2020) and it was being shown at the end of almost every show by the fall of 1896.^[3]

Reaction

The film contained the very first kiss on film, with a close-up of a nuzzling duo followed by a short peck on the lips ("the mysteries of the kiss revealed"). The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and obscene to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral reform, as kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution.^[7]^{[better source needed]}

The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown. One contemporary critic wrote, "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting."^[8]

However, according to Dengler (1979) in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, the shocked reaction of the general public is a myth.^[9]

The Edison catalogue advertised it this way: "They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time."

Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898)

Perhaps in defiance, and "to spice up a film", this was followed by many kiss imitators and take-offs, including Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898),^[10] The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) and The Kiss (1900).

Public exposure

For a number of years, it was believed that a showing of The Kiss was the first film publicly shown in Canada, projected in West End Park, Ottawa, on July 21, 1896. It has since been learned that the competing Lumière Brothers Cinematograph had already exhibited different films in Montreal 24 days earlier, on June 27, 1896.^[11]

References

^ "Preserving the Silver Screen (December 1999) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
^ ^a ^b ^c Eagan 2010, p. 5.
^ Williams 2008, p. 27.
^ "The Vitascope". The Buffalo Commercial. June 8, 1896. p. 11. Archived from the original on November 26, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Foster 2000, p. 13.
^ "Sex in Cinema: Pre-1920s Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes". www.filmsite.org. Retrieved 2024-08-03.
^ The Chap-book, Volume 5, Number 5, July 15, 1896
^ Dengler, Ralph S.J. (1979). "The First Screen Kiss and "The Cry of Censorship"". Journal of Popular Film and Television. 7 (3): 267–272. doi:10.1080/01956051.1979.9944202.
^ "Brief Descriptions and Expanded Essays of National Film Registry Titles". Film Registry - National Film Preservation Board - Library of Congress. Retrieved 2018-12-26.
^ Gaudreault, André and Lacasse, Germain (1996). "The Introduction of the Lumière Cinematograph in Canada", Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Volume 5, No. 2.

Works cited

Foster, Charles (2000). Stardust and Shadows: Canadians in Early Hollywood. Dundurn Press. ISBN 1550023489.
Eagan, Daniel (2010). America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 9780826418494.
Williams, Linda (2008). Screening Sex. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822342632.

External links

The Kiss at IMDb
The Kiss at Library of Congress
The Kiss video and biography of May Irwin
The Kiss on YouTube
The Kiss essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 4–5 [1]