Not since the 30s Gangster Cycle has an urban criminal been so lionized as Kiss of Death’s Nick Bianco (Victor Mature). We get a clue early in a mirror shot of Nick, indicating two sides to his nature, in the elevator descending from the opening jewel heist. This descent, with all its agonising stops at one banal floor after another, beautifully builds the tension and strengthens our identification with the gangster. That visual duality is reinforced by various authority figures verbally endorsing Nick’s ‘difference’ from the run-of-the-mill hood. The hagiography is complete when, entering an orphanage, the camera frames Nick tightly below a cross, beatifying him in stained glass sunbeams radiating upward.

What’s interesting is that this is used to critique the establishment. "Your side’s nearly as crooked as mine" he tells pragmatic DA Louie D’Angelo (Brian Donlevy) after sealing the deal that propels the plot forward. Nick’s view of the justice system is reinforced when he, D’Angelo and a police bodyguard arrive together at the orphanage to be greeted with the nun’s query: "Which one of you is Mr Bianco?"

Naming symbolism underlines this for those who can interpret the Italian for bianco (white), de angelo (of the angels) and the pseudonym Nick adopts in the antediluvian witness protection situation he finds himself in – cavallo (knight). Co-writer Ben Hecht was in on the ground floor of ambiguous gangster portrayals with his seminal Scarface but what’s changed in the intervening decades is the souring of the humanism underpinning the American Dream. Where the 1930s could accommodate Horatio Alger individualism expressed in ‘can do’ upwardly mobile gangsters, a postwar audience faced the impossible task of reconciling footage of GIs liberating Buchenwald with a worldview of good guys and bad guys.

The previous year’s The Postman Always Rings Twice had "burst the dam" of Hays Code censorship and its legendary dictum that no criminal go unpunished, and 1947 was no time to teach war-sickened audiences a trite lesson. Thus its ‘cake-and-eat-it-too’ ending which is a flaw in the film, undermining not just hagiography’s need for martyrdom but also medical textbooks, considering how many slugs Nick eats.

All of which overlooks the enduring impact of Kiss of Death: the debut performance of Richard Skidmark, err, Widmark, as psychotic (with a capital ‘tic’) gunsel Tommy Udo. The notorious wheelchair assassination is handled so objectively that today, audiences inured to uber-violence barely flinch. Be thankful this is the 1940s and we are spared Peckinpah-inspired excesses of slo-mo, freeze frame etc. Widmark wisely moved away from this persona to ensure his career longevity but it can be seen reprised note-perfect in Frank Gorshin’s Riddler in the 1960s Batman TV series.

With its Naked City inspired insistence on location shooting, Kiss of Death has enormous documentary value today, and its scariest scenes are the Sing-Sing prison textile factory – an occupational health and safety nightmare!

Despite Widmark’s impact I can’t get past Mature, who rarely figured in thrillers. Anyone who says he can’t act should watch the scene where Nick waits for Udo in Luigi’s restaurant. As Nick stares straight ahead we sense the arrival of Udo in Mature’s face as his temples bulge almost imperceptibly before those hooded eyes swivel slowly to the far side of the room. In a correspondingly brilliant shot Widmark’s features separately fill a tiny slit in the heavy curtain behind which his party had been dining, ending with one maniacal eye staring out through the cat’s-eye slit of this pillbox ordinaire.

It’s a brilliant exchange from a film that’s always stood alone at the top of, rather than amongst, the Hollywood thriller.

- Roger Westcombe