--- title: TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses | TIME description: Movie critic Richard Corliss reminds us of some of the best smooches in cinema history. canonical: https://time.com/video/bl2FyODa/ og:title: TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses og:description: Movie critic Richard Corliss reminds us of some of the best smooches in cinema history. og:url: https://time.com/video/bl2FyODa/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bl2FyODa/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses twitter:description: Movie critic Richard Corliss reminds us of some of the best smooches in cinema history. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bl2FyODa/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses [Watch (HLS stream): TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/bl2FyODa.m3u8) (7:17)  _Published 2014-02-03. Movie critic Richard Corliss reminds us of some of the best smooches in cinema history._ --- Jul 27, 2023 12:44 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Richard Corliss on the Best Holiday Movies and TV](/video/v7XJGFE7/) ### Richard Corliss on the Best Holiday Movies and TV [TIME's Favorite Political Movies](/video/XDJ9vmLw/) ### TIME's Favorite Political Movies [TIME's Favorite Chinese Movies](/video/bvnXzN7d/) ### TIME's Favorite Chinese Movies --- ## Transcript This is Richard Corliss of TIME Magazine here to tell you the most important lesson Hollywood taught the world, how to make love. A century ago as movie houses sprang up across the world, people could study the fine art of rowing as demonstrated by experts, the beautiful people of the cinema coming together. There they stand near enough to fill each other's heat, a whispered endearment, a caress and then the big kiss and we have sat in a theater taking mental notes so we can practice with our date on the way home. Here are 15 of the old- time favorite screen kisses, a brief history of movie romance and for Time. com readers our Valentine to you. In the movies' golden age, the 30s through the 50s, the kiss was such a force of nature that had had to be accompanied by a glorious sunset as in Gone with the Wind or by crashing waves on the Hawaiian beach as we see with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr smooching in From Here to Eternity or on the Riviera with fireworks, a pretty obvious sexual metaphor, but a glorious counterpoint to the kiss being shared by Grace Kelly and the movies all- time romantic leading man, Cary Grant. Movies love to show the moment two people fall in love and sealed with a kiss. In the Wedding Singer, Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler are pretending not to be very attached to each other, but when they kiss it's so much more difficult to hide. The strangest things can bring two beings together like a strand of spaghetti in Lady and the Tramp. Lady and the Tramp are youngest couple except in Dog Years, but the second one would be Henry Thomas and Erika Eleniak in E. T. E. T .: The Extra- Terrestrial is at home watching a wonderful scene from the quiet man when witch John Wayne seizes Maureen O'Hara in a storm and kisses her so she'll never forget it. Henry Thomas feels this the vibes from E. T. takes the beautiful blonde child and gives her a smooch they will never forget. Sometimes, two people create their own moment with the help of some cinema magic. Here are the preposterously beautiful Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift practically nose- to- nose together in gigantic close- ups in A Place in the Sun. They taught themselves practically into an orgasm as they get closer and closer. >> Hold you where I can see you. I can hold you next to me. >> And when camera gets nearer and nearer, counting their pores until they have one majestic kiss. Sometimes, the woman just has to take charge in this scene from To Have and Have Not. Lauren Bacall teaches Humphrey Bogart not only how to kiss-- >> It's even better when you help. >> but how to whistle too. >> You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? >> You just put your lips together and blow. >> Sometimes the audience waits an entire movie for the perfect kiss. In Love in the Afternoon, Gary Cooper is an old rake who's toying with the affections of beautiful, beautiful Audrey Hepburn. At the end of the movie, he's going away on a train. She is standing at the platform waving him goodbye. But the magnetism of their love drags her down the platform until at the end he sweeps her up into his arms and they have a kiss worth waiting for. >> Be quiet, Ariane. Be quiet. >> Not every kiss expresses romantic or erotic urges. There is the kiss of betrayal, the kiss of hatred. In this scene, the kiss of death when Godfather Michael Corleone tells his brother, Fredo that he knows he set him up. It's one of the most powerful kisses in movies, the kiss that kills. >> I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart. It was the kiss of duplicity. In Some Like It Hot, Tony Curtis gets the kiss Marilyn Monroe as two different people. First, he becomes to be millionaire who's frigid in order to get thawed out from the ultra hot Marilyn. >> Could I take another crack at it? >> All right if you insist. >> The second time he's in drag and kisses woman to woman it seems Marilyn at the end of the movie, but this time he's not kidding. In recent years, Hollywood has expanded the permutations of people eligible to kiss. Brokeback Mountain with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal is about two men who fall in love and it has an intensity and honesty that for many people makes it the romantic film of the decade. There's not much place for women a little on romance in the modern action films and yet even Spider Man could turn upside down to kisses beloved in the very first movie. So many possibilities in kissing in movies, but we're gonna leave you with an old- fashioned kiss pure and passionate for Valentines Day. >> We reach for each other. >> What? What? >> Nice kissing again. You don't wanna hear that. >> I don't mind so much. >> Okay. >> Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. There's one left them all behind. >> This is Richard Corliss, your Time. connoisseurlove. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME's Favorite Movie Kisses","description":"Movie critic Richard Corliss reminds us of some of the best smooches in cinema history.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bl2FyODa/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-02-03T20:45:34.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/bl2FyODa.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/bl2FyODa/","duration":"PT7M17S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/bl2FyODa/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```