Who first came up with kissing and why kissers don't get in the way of noses

Movie kisses:

Click on photo to view gallery

"Three Flavors of Your Kiss"

One of the most famous kisses in film history: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic, 1997

On the set of the melodrama The Notebook, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, playing lovers, got so carried away that they eventually started dating. Their kiss in the pouring rain is recognized as one of the most romantic movie kisses of the 2000s.

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For World Kissing Day, which is celebrated today, July 6, HELLO! decided to study the history of the issue.

Nadezhda Rumyantseva (cook Tosya) and Nikolai Rybnikov (lumberjack Ilya) in the film Girls, 1961

When people learned to kiss and why this process, dubious from the point of view of hygiene, gained such popularity, science does not know. There is a version (not the most aesthetic) that primitive mothers did this. They chewed food and fed babies (like birds chicks - from beak to beak), and then, when the children learned to work their jaws on their own, they kissed them to calm them down and show - "I'm here!" The ancient Vedic texts, created one and a half thousand years BC, describe how people rubbed their noses in order to please each other, and in the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata there is the first mention of a kiss: "She brought her mouth to mine, and this caused pleasure in my".

The Indians taught the Greeks to kiss during the eastern campaign of the army of Alexander of Macendon (mid-4th century BC), but kisses became most widespread in Ancient Rome. The Romans developed a whole system of kisses: friendly (osculum) - on the cheek, erotic (basium) and deep (savolium), now known as "French" (but, apparently, historical justice requires calling it "ancient Roman"). All three types were practiced only within one class (patricians kissed with patricians, plebeians with plebeians), and in general there were a lot of strictness. For example, if someone decided to reward a girl with a ringing bazium in a public place, then he, as an honest person, was obliged to marry her. By the way, the modern custom of kissing at a wedding after pronouncing an oath of allegiance also, they say, went from Ancient Rome.

Click on photo to view gallery The melodrama "Gone with the Wind" was filmed when censorship was rampant in America - the Hayes Code. The on-screen kiss could last no more than three seconds, and both actors had to be in an upright position. It's no wonder that the characters of Clark Gable (Rhett Battler) and Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara) are so restrained and impeccably decent, 1939
The director of the thriller "Basic Instinct" Paul Verhoeven paid special attention to explicit scenes. One of them was filmed for a whole week. As a result, the audience had the impression that the actors had everything for real. Not only kisses. Pictured: Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas

Hollywood kiss: myth or reality?

No offense to primitive mothers will be said, but it seems to us, modern people, that kissing was invented in Hollywood: they do it so beautifully, technically flawlessly and contagiously in American films. However, in the cinema, they did not learn how to kiss beautifully right away. In the 30-second film The Kiss (1896), the first film in history to show the process, an elderly gentleman with a mustache (actor John S. Rice) and his worthy girlfriend (actress May Irwin) kiss, giggling, whispering and awkwardly looking at the camera. The spectacle is more amusing than exciting, but even this clumsy pantomime struck the inexperienced inhabitants of puritanical America at the end of the 19th century to the core. The newspapers wrote that it was "an absolutely disgusting sight that induces nausea", but the audience ("overcoming disgust" and nausea) watched "The Kiss" again and again, and as a result, pictures of this content began to grow like mushrooms after rain. In 1926, the film "Don Juan" was released, in which the actor John Barrymore kissed different partners a record 191 times, and in 1930, women kissed passionately in the film "Morocco".

However, the music did not last long. In the same 1930, the Hays Code was adopted in Hollywood (which was finally abolished only in 1968) - a set of rules according to which everything that the censors found indecent was subject to a ban. The document, in particular, said that a kiss on the screen can last no more than three seconds, while both artists must be strictly in an upright position (this was conventionally called the four-leg rule). New times have come for film companies - a tedious struggle with censorship and all sorts of headaches. Directors were sophisticated in ways to circle the censors around their fingers. Hitchcock, in Notorious, had Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman kiss several times for three seconds, with breaks for conversations and a phone call, and Frank Borzeigi, in His Butler's Sister, filmed Deanna Durbin and Franchot Tone kissing in an elevator. The actors embraced each other as they entered the elevator, and when the doors opened they were still inseparable. It was like the kiss between Durbin and Thawne didn't stop for a minute as the elevator crawled through the floors.

Click on photo to view gallery Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity: An Exhilarating Kiss on a Hawaiian Beach, 1953
The kiss of Ichthyander (Vladimir Korenev) in a scaly suit and Gutierre (Anastasia Vertinskaya) caused the heartbeat of millions of impressionable citizens. "Amphibian Man", 1961

Censorship began to gradually lose ground only after 1945. The first "slap in the face of public taste" was the comedy "Only Girls in Jazz" (1959), in which Marilyn Monroe, almost naked (in a shiny dress without underwear), treated with kisses from the coldness of a millionaire saxophonist (played by Tony Curtis), who was at that moment in... horizontal position.

"I am also a man. I want to kiss!"

Speaking of kisses in Russian cinema, the first thing that comes to mind is "Girls" - the first kiss of the cook Tosya Kislitsyna and the lumberjack Ilya Kovrigin - an unfading classic for all time. Ilya gently kisses Tosya on the cheek, she closes her eyes in fear, and Ilya, frightened himself, bounces off her and shrinks, as if expecting a blow. “You know, I used to think all the time how people kiss? Well, should their noses get in the way? But now I see: their noses don’t get in the way,” Tosya says naively, and the audience smiles at such childish simplicity. For many years in Soviet cinema, kisses were more like kisses of friendship and carried a minimum of erotic load. At the most crucial moment, the actors turned away from the viewer, covered themselves with hats and kissed, tightly pursing their lips. It was believed that love is not African passions and somersaults in bed, but something more: a great, bright, creative and truly humanistic feeling. The stars of the national screen expressed love through the looks, intonation, gestures, wonderful deeds of their heroes ... Nowadays, when "they show such things in films!" and you won’t surprise anyone with any “shades of gray”, many people remember those times with nostalgia. However, then the filmmakers themselves were in many ways burdened by the modest chastity of our cinema. When the wind of change blew and much became possible, it turned out that Soviet actors really didn’t know how to kiss in front of the camera. "They, if they kiss each other, do it headlong, as if they are rushing into a pool," director Mikhail Romm sneered at one of the artistic councils. As if to confirm the words of the master, the recollections of actress Larisa Golubkina about how she starred with Yuri Yakovlev in the kiss scene in the comedy "The Hussar Ballad" sound: "We had a final love scene with a kiss. I didn't have much experience in this ... And here is the first take: I run, close my eyes, rush and ... rip off his glued mustache. The second take is the same. I was so shy and worried! "

Director Eldar Ryazanov "dragged" eroticism onto the Soviet screen in the comedy "Office Romance": Novoseltsev (Andrey Myagkov) passionately kissed Lyudmila Prokofievna (Alisa Freindlich) at home, at work and - for the first time in the history of our cinema! - in the back seat of a taxi

"Three Flavors of Your Kiss"

"On stage, one of the most unpleasant scenes is a kiss. A painted face with a glued mustache and beard climbs towards you. God knows what!" - with Chekhov's mocking intonation wrote the magazine "Screen and Ramp" in 1912. Indeed, often what causes tears of tenderness in the audience or excitement in the blood, for the performers is rather a sad inevitability and a test that would be better avoided. The kiss between Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind is considered a classic of the genre, a Hollywood reference kiss. How many tears were shed while watching the picture and how many millions of women dreamed of being in Vivienne's place! But, as it turned out, the actress herself was not delighted in this scene. Vivien complained that Gable's dentures smelled bad. Well-known Los Angeles dentist Dr. Katz, who goes to half of Hollywood and is called the "guru of fresh breath", believes that the main problem of people from show business is that they drink a lot and smoke a lot. "Bad breath was a problem in Hollywood's golden age and remains a problem today," he says. In the ratings of the worst "kissers" regularly compiled by American magazines, you can find the names of stars of the first magnitude - Ben Affleck, whom Sandra Bullock gave mints on the set of the film "Forces of Nature" (1999), Jennifer Aniston, allegedly abusing coffee, Matthew McConaughey , who does not use deodorants, and Robert Pattinson, suspected of rabies because of the smell of sweat. The twos and threes of kisses are opposed by those who are always clean, impeccable and excellent in kissing technique. Good words from Marion Cotillard were awarded to Johnny Depp, her partner in the film "Johnny D.", and Keira Knightley said that after a kiss with Johnny in "Pirates of the Caribbean" she was ready to squeal with joy. Lady Gaga praised the tenderness of Alexander Skarsgard, with whom she kissed in the video for the song Paparazzi, and Uma Thurman called the kiss with Ethan Hawke in "Gattaca" the best of her career.

Grisha Koltsov (Yuri Belov) closed his eyes in anticipation of Lenochka Krylova's kiss: "Well, kiss me!" A polisher passing by (Vladimir Pitsek) responded suspiciously easily to his request.

"Please Kiss for Health"

Jokes are jokes, but a kiss on the screen is really not an easy task. Everything is like in life, no more, no less. It takes a lot of training to master this art to the right degree, not to harm either yourself or your partner. Scientists believe that kissing is extremely beneficial for health: with their help, you can strengthen tooth enamel, prevent cavities and smooth out wrinkles. Kissers are less likely to suffer from diseases of the blood, stomach and gallbladder. They are stress-resistant and more likely to achieve professional and personal success. So on World Kissing Day, you can wish all readers - "More practice!". Or, as the hero of the comedy "Truffaldino from Bergamo" said: "Please kiss to your health."