Watched: 02/15/2023
Format: TCM
Viewing: First
Director: Norman Foster
Boy, they really used to know how to name a movie, didn't they?
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) is post-war noir, filmed in Hollywood doing it's darndest to look like post-War London, and populated by British ex-pats and Burt Lancaster. You get Joan Fontaine! How can that be wrong?
This film is the darkest of noir, and an interesting example of the movement. Normally I think of noir as including either a person who is in a morally corrupt world because of their choice of job as a detective, but much more often as a person who is corrupted by a compulsion (here's where you get your femme fatales leading morally shaky fellows astray) and their world turns upside down. But this movie has a flawed protagonist who is also the victim of what we'd now call PTSD - a veteran of the war who saw no point in going back to the U.S. and is adrift in London.