If you were afraid to watch, I'll describe it to you. After a few seconds of awkwardly mushing their mouths together, two genteel folks give each other a dry peck upon the lips. It's the passionless, saliva-less kiss of a loveless Midwestern marriage. A kiss like that is the only way of using your mouth to tell your wife you've always been in love with another man that's more effective than actually just telling her.
Depicting the world's least-sexual use of lips since the invention of spelling bees didn't stop the Catholic Church from condemning The Kiss, however. Maybe they wouldn't have condemned it if, instead of a revolting, disgusting, pornographic kiss, Edison had shown horrific depictions of torture -- which, knowing Edison, was probably what he wanted to film anyway.
A contemporary commentator called The Kiss "absolutely disgusting" and "indecent in its emphasized vulgarity." He even called for police intervention, which apparently happened. In some cities, police would confiscate the film, and in Chicago they would refuse to issue screening permits if potential theaters wanted to show "immoral or obscene" films. Is it impressive or sad that people back then were apparently able to jerk off to this?
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