Diana Wichtel: Last kisses - empowering or tragic?

Al Pacino and John Cazale in The Godfather Part II after "il bacio della morte".

OPINION

The last kiss. It’s a deathless trope of romantic films and television, which is ironic. Because however poignant and meaningful a movie’s last kiss may be, it almost inevitably signals tragedy. Someone is about to die, deny a great love for some noble principle, or sacrifice themselves, as Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack does in Titanic, so Kate Winslet’s Rose can survive by floating on a door that people are still arguing was clearly big enough for both of them.

Sometimes a movie will attempt to make a tragic last kiss empowering. See Louise kiss Thelma before she defiantly drives them off the edge of the Grand Canyon. People are still arguing about how feminist that last scene actually is but that is one arresting final embrace.

Last kisses are generally an affront to the notion that love conquers all. In Casablanca, it’s 1942. Humphrey Bogart’s Rick tells his lost love, Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa, before they part forever, “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Perhaps only in The Sound of Music could love conquer the Nazis.

I must have been about 10, watching old movies on television, when I saw David Lean’s 1945 masterpiece, Brief Encounter. Celia Johnson’s bored housewife, Laura, strikes up a friendship with Trevor Howard’s dedicated doctor, Alec. They fall in love, stealing kisses at the train station when she’s supposed to be exercising her only acceptable emotional outlet: shopping. No sex scenes. In those puritanical days you had to make do with shots of trains thundering through tunnels with a full head of steam. Laura’s daydream on the train home about a life with Alec on a moonlit tropical beach collides like a train crash with the reality she sees out the window: “Those palm trees changed into those pollarded willows by the canal, just before the level crossing,” she muses sadly. Interrupted during their final farewell, they don’t even get their last kiss. She has to settle for a stiff-upper-lip-old-thing squeeze on the shoulder. I was infuriated as a child by their suffering nobility. Brief Encounter is a reminder that the kisses that should never have happened are the ones you never forget.

So much noble pain, so much passion under pressure. Yet when the theme of this week’s Canvas arrived in my inbox, the first last kiss I thought of was the one Michael Corleone plants on his brother, Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Michael finds out that Fredo has betrayed him. The kiss is “il bacio della morte”, the Mafia kiss of death, a signal that Michael is going to whack his own brother. What makes the scene so unsettling is not how different it is from most last kisses but how much it mimics them. It’s that romantic moment, midnight at a New Year’s Eve party. Michael pulls Fredo in for a hard, furious kiss on the mouth. “I know it was you, Fredo,” he says. “You broke my heart.”

For every last kiss there must be a first. Favourite scene: the one, in brilliant 80s gumshoe dramedy Moonlighting, in which David and Maddie finally really get it on after three seasons of tease. They yell at each other. “Bitch.” “Bastard.” She slaps him. As she goes to slap him again, he grabs her and props fly. It has everything but a steam train hurtling through a tunnel. It turned out to be a “bacia della morte” for a show that was propelled by sexual tension - but it was magnificent.

With last things in mind, this is the final issue of Canvas with Sarah Daniell as editor. When I heard the news, I wrote to her to express my appreciation for what can seem to be rare qualities: “Your kindness, iron-clad support, funny emails and wisdom.” I’ve loved the magazine on her watch: change embraced, new voices heard and great, sometimes challenging, stories told.

Ngā mihi nui, Sarah, it’s been a privilege.