Kiss Me Deadly/Film Noir

The opening shot of Robert Aldrich’s, Kiss Me, Deadly is of an empty country road during a dark night. There’s a woman frantically running down the road; we see flashes of her feet and hear the staccato sound of her sobbing and gasping for breath. She attempts to flag down a car. The first simply passes, as does the second. A third car approaches and she stands directly in its path, forcing the impressive Jag to swerve off the road. There’s a close up shot of the driver, Mike Hammer, who angrily presents the opening line of the script. “You almost wrecked my car...well?” The girl gets in, and as they pull back onto the road, the sound of her continued sobbing is joined by the melancholy voice of Nat King Cole, which slowly floats from the car’s radio.
Directed and produced in 1953, Aldrich’s Kiss Me, Deadly was released into theaters as the classic film noir period was coming to an end. Yet, many critics and fans of film noir consider Kiss Me, Deadly to be a classic...