Screenplay: Lawrence Roman based on the novel A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin. It has been reformatted into shorter paragraphs.Īfterwards, in an Addendum, I critique a key aspect of Robert Miklitsch’s analysis of A Kiss Before Dying, which is included in his book, The Red and the Black: American Film Noir in the 1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2017).ĭirector: Gerd Oswald. Note that judging by the synopsis on Wikipedia, the 1956 film starring a noticeably-non-blond Robert Wagner seems to be a truncated version of the story.The text in the Presentation below is based on my plot summary and commentary about A Kiss Before Dying, as published in Film Noir: The Encyclopedia (Overlook Duckworth, 2010, 166-167). Score: 4/5 (I was tempted to deduct a point for the cover) Ultimately A Kiss Before Dying earns its position as a classic, although probably best avoided if you’re in a new relationship. Like Millar’s killer, though, there is one person who sees the good in him. He appears to have been born bad rather than suffering from an illness. Levin’s killer is far more low key, less sympathetic, and crazy in a far more pragmatic but ultimately nastier way. It’s interesting to compare Levin’s portrayal of a psychotic personality with that of Margaret Millar’s Beast in View, also written in the early 50s. In each of the book’s three parts, he finds an ingenious new way to ruin lives whilst getting away scot-free. He had thought about it, and decided it had something to do with the coldness she felt towards her father.’ When he called her “baby” he could get her to do practically anything. ‘He has discovered that she liked to be called “baby”. We meet the blond, blue-eyed villain of the story straight away, almost mechanically brow-beating his rich girlfriend into having an abortion so that her father doesn’t cut her off from the family money.

Equally, I wouldn’t read the Chelsea Cain introduction until you’ve finished (although to be fair she doesn’t give too much away, she did colour my reading of the first part of the book).

It’s difficult to give any summary of the plot without giving away an early surprise, so I won’t go much beyond chapter one here. It won the Edgar Award in 1954 and is listed at 44 in the CWA top 100, a position it richly deserves. A Kiss Before Dying was his first published novel and shows him coming out swinging.

This edition 2011, Corsair (Constable & Robinson)Īrguably, Ira Levin wrote some of the best high concept stories ever: Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from Brazil.

A kiss before dying levin