The Kiss
 | This Work page is a stub. You can help All The Tropes by expanding it. If you have checked or updated this page and found the content to be suitable, please remove this notice. |
At the time it was produced in 1896, the 20-second film The Kiss was denounced in some parts of the country as illicit pornography. Produced under the auspices of Thomas Edison's company, and directed and photographed by William Heise, The Kiss between the actors May Irwin and John C. Rice was a reenactment of the final scene of a stage success of theirs titled The Widow Jones. And, at the time, despite the controversy, audiences of the emerging art form were drawn to the film's provocative subject matter, and reportedly demanded that the stars be reteamed.
The Kiss represents not only film's first romance but also the first time films were regularly projected on screens rather than shown to individual viewers on machines that became known as nickelodeons.
The Kiss was added to the National Film Registry in 1999.
Watch it at the Library of Congress or on our own Source subpage.
- Values Dissonance: A kiss was seen to be "illicit pornography".
| This page needs more trope entries. You can help this wiki by adding more entries or expanding current ones. |