106
Kingship falls prey to the kiss of the spider-man and pays for it, like
Dorrie, with her life. However, in Gerd Oswald’s noir en couleur, it’s
the “girl detective” — pretty in pink, not black — who masters the man
who would be king.
Ohio University
Robert Miklitsch
Notes
1 The reasons are cultural and historical, political and technological, and include
the “ 1948 consent decree that separated distribution from exhibition; an antitrust
suit against Technicolor that accused them of monopolizing the color field; the
introduction of Eastmancolor negative; and competition from a new medium,
television” (Haines 149).
^ For a critical synopsis of Oswald’s film noirs, including A Kiss before Dying,
see Ursini.
^ See Street, “The Talented Mr. Ripley. Costuming Identity.”
^ On the female detective in film noir, see, for example, Hanson and Gates.
Works Cited
A Kiss Before Dying. Dir. Gerd Oswald. Twentieth Century-Fox, 1956.
DVD.
Ballinger, Alexander and Danny Graydon. The Rough Guide to Film
Noir. London; Rough Guides, 2007. Print.
Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama o f American
Film Noir. Trans. Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights,
2002. Print.
Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the
American City. New York: The Free P, 1997. Print.
Gates, Philippa. Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective
Film. Albany: State U of New York P, 2011. Print.
Hanson, Helen. Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the
Female Gothic. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Print.
Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York: Vintage, 1992.
Print.
Crawford, James. “Bedroom Eyes.” Reverse Shot 34 (Summer 2006): n.
pag. Web. 6 June 2014.
Keating, Patrick. Hollywood Lighting: From the Silent Era to Film Noir.
New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print.
Lev, Peter. Transforming the Screen: 1950-1959. Ed. Lev. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Print.