Page to Screen: A Kiss Before Dying

Last week I reviewed Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying. This book has been made into a movie twice – once in 1956 and once in 1991. Today I’m going to review the 1956 movie starring Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward.

A Kiss Before Dying is a very hard book to adapt to the screen. A good portion of the book’s suspense is due to the fact that the reader doesn’t know the identity of the killer, since the reader cannot see the killer’s face and his name is not mentioned. In the movie, the viewer knows who the killer is from the beginning so there is no surprise reveal later on. This movie version leaves out the character of Marion all together. I think if Ellen would have had the same fate as in the book and Marion was in the movie, that the killer would have been shown to be more calculating and sociopathic.

Since this is a 1950s film noir, the score is almost obnoxious. There were so many screechingly dramatic musical sound effects that it was almost comical. I can’t really fault this individual movie for that as I think that was the common practice of the time.

Overall, I thought this was a good movie in and of itself but I didn’t think it was a great adaptation of the book.