Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) - film review

Ralph Cotter, a notorious gangster, escapes from a prison farm with a fellow convict, Carleton.  Pursued by police, Cotter kills Carleton to facilitate his own escape and hooks up with Carleton’s sister, Holiday.  Assisted by Jinx, another crook, and garage owner Mason, Cotter raids a large store, but he is forced to hand over the booty to two crooked cops, Weber and Reece.  With the help of an unscrupulous lawyer named Mandon, Cotter blackmails Weber and Reece into returning the stolen money and supporting him in his next hold up.  Meanwhile, the gangster has fallen for Margaret Dobson, the daughter of the most influential man in town.  In doing so, Cotter makes a deadly enemy...

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is the gangster film that James Cagney made immediately after White Heat (1949), which is widely regarded as the absolute high point of his career.  The two films are often compared, and indeed they have much in common.  Both portray the gangster world with a level of violence and vicious realism which was exceedingly rare in Hollywood at the time, thanks to the strictures imposed by the Hays Code.  Cagney is at his most sadistic, relishing in the brutality he metes out to all who get in his way, seemingly untroubled by conscience or fear of reprisal.  But whereas White Heat is universally acknowledged as a classic, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is far less well-known and is often dismissed as just another hard-boiled film noir thriller.

What makes Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye such a great film, what makes it stand apart from the plethora of films noirs, is that the characters are not just the familiar gangster film stereotypes but real characters, with real motivations, all trapped in a world of vice from which there is no escape.  It helps that the performances are of the highest calibre – Cagney is particularly good, if anything more convincing, more manic, more terrifying than in White Heat – but the excellent screenplay and Gordon Douglas’s inspired direction are ultimately what make the film so effective and memorable.  Admittedly, the plot gets a little muddled here and there, but isn’t a labyrinthine storyline part of the appeal of a good film noir?  

James Cagney’s brother, William, puts in a fleeting appearance in an uncredited role, playing the brother of Cagney’s character.  William Cagney produced this and a string of James Cagney’s other films after the actor’s acrimonious break-up with Warner Brothers in the mid-1940s.

It may not be James Cagney’s best film, it may not even be the best Hollywood gangster film, but Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is still compulsive viewing, an essential film noir experience for any true aficionado of the genre.  And it offers two stunning femmes fatales (Barbara Payton and Helena Carter) for the price of one.  What is there not to like?

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