Kiss of Death by Mike Leigh
Far more interesting than ‘Nuts in May’, because it wasn’t a natural winner. The performances are stunning. It introduced David Threlfall to the world. The leading lady, Mike said, left the profession after this. A great shame, if so. It has my favourite sequence of any film I’ve ever cut. This is when our hero goes to the girl’s home after dealing with the dead baby. She greets him with, ‘ Yer can’t come in, me mam ain’t in’. So begins a perfect section of sexual tension. Fantastic! At one stage of working on it, apparently he DID say ‘yes’ to going upstairs. Half way up, our heroine cried, ‘I am coming out of character!!’ The dead baby is awful. David Rose and I tried hard to get him to drop it. Is it necessary? Looking at a bit 10 years ago, I thought it looked rather too tightly cut. I could be wrong.
Almost forgot! A very clever music score by Carl Davis a la Hindemith Wry – tongue in cheek, splendid!