The Kiss (1896) FULL VIDEO

 

The Kiss (1896) 

Director: William Heise

Screenplay: John J. McNally

Cast: May Irwin, John C. Rice

Release Date: April 1, 1896

Country of Origin: USA

Just before the love-smitten gentleman chooses to offer his chosen one an innocent peck, two passionate lovers embrace and converse at a hair's breadth in a medium closeup shot of the first kiss ever captured on screen.

Actors May Irwin and John C. Rice perform the contentious last scene of the stage musical drama "The Widow Jones" in a medium closeup of the first kiss ever captured on cinema. This enticing reenactment, sometimes called "The May Irwin Kiss" or "The Rice/Irwin Kiss," shows two passionate lovers cuddling and talking at a hair's breadth. Just before the love-smitten gentleman decides to enter, he quickly brushes his well-groomed mustache to give his chosen one an innocent peck rather than a passionate kiss. Naturally, a lot has changed since 1896, and what is today considered harmless was scandalous at the time.

The Kiss, also called The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss, and The Widow Jones, is a short film from 1896 that was among the first to be released for commercial viewing. It is around eighteen seconds long and shows a reenactment of May Irwin and John Rice's kiss from the theatrical musical The Widow Jones' last scene. William Heise directed the movie on behalf of Thomas Edison. The first American film studio, the Edison Studios of Edison, produced the movie in April 1896. Edison was employed in the West Orange, New Jersey, Black Maria studios at the time.

The United States Library of Congress designated the short as "culturally significant" in 1999, and it was chosen for National Film Registry preservation.

The movie was one of Edison's final shots of Black Maria.

Charles Musser claims that the movie was released in April or May of 1896 and was made public by a sponsored item about actors sharing a kiss on stage in the New York World. In addition to discussing the controversies surrounding onstage kissing, the piece directed readers to The Widow Jones and the Edison movie and included a picture of the Irwin and Rice kiss. The marketing aimed to simultaneously draw attention to the play, movie, and newspaper. The movie was screened during Vitascope demos.

At first opposed to the movie, Charles Frohman said, "I shall have to consider replacing Miss Irwin" in The Widow Jones. However, he then requested that Edson Raff mention Irwin's role in the short film's advertisement.

By the fall of 1896, the movie was being screened at the conclusion of nearly every presentation, having been sold to exhibitors for $7.50 ($232 in 2020).

In several locations where it was screened, the movie was said to have sparked a scandalized commotion, led to negative newspaper editorials, and prompted calls for police action. "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," wrote a contemporary critic. However, Dengler (1979) in the Journal of Popular Film and Television claims that the public's shocked response is a myth.

As stated in the Edison catalog, "They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time."

This movie was followed by numerous copycats and takeoffs, such as Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898), The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), and The Kiss (1900), possibly in defiance and "to spice up a film".

For several years, it was thought that The Kiss, which was screened in Ottawa's West End Park on July 21, 1896, was the country's first movie to be presented in public. It has recently been discovered that 24 days prior, on June 27, 1896, the rival Lumière Brothers Cinematograph had already screened many films in Montreal.

The 1896 short film The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss) is a landmark in cinematic history, recognized for several "firsts" that shaped the industry. 

Its pioneering achievements include:

First On-Screen Kiss: It is the first motion picture to depict a couple kissing in cinematic history. The 18–20 second film re-enacts the final scene of the Broadway musical comedy The Widow Jones featuring actors May Irwin and John Rice.

First Controversial Film & Demand for Censorship: The film's "magnified" close-up of an intimate act led to immediate backlash from critics and moral reformers who deemed it obscene and indecent. This prompted the first formal calls for film censorship and regulation in the United States, including from the Roman Catholic Church.

Early Use of the Close-Up: It is cited as one of the first films to effectively utilize a medium close-up shot, framing the actors from the chest up against a black background to emphasize facial expressions and the act of kissing itself.

Commercial Success & Cross-Promotion: Produced by Thomas Edison's company and filmed at his Black Maria studio, it was Edison's most popular release of 1896. It served as an early example of cross-promotion between stage and screen, as the film was commissioned following the success of the stage play.

First Public Film Screenings: It was among the first films shown commercially to the public via the Vitascope projector. Historical records also suggest it was the first film publicly projected in Canada in July 1896. 

The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1999 for its historical and cultural significance.