96
male who will marry and/or kill for wealth” and it is therefore a “film
noir by virtue of its theme, more than its stylistics” (96). Bud Corliss is a
true, classic homme fatal, but the character’s charisma has everything to
do with the film’s ravishing array of warm and cool colors (Bud, of
course, is associated with aquamarine blues). Moreover, as overseen by
Lucian Ballard, the cinematography — the widescreen CinemaScope
format as well as the film’s “prevailing aesthetic” of “detached, mediumlength two-shots”—all but preclude “viewer identification” and
“emotional investment” (Crawford), a perspective that aligns us with
Bud’s “cool,” acquisitive point of view.
Shot in Twentieth Century-Fox Deluxe color on and around
Tucson, Arizona (which doubles as the fictional town of Lupton), the
desert setting of A Kiss Before DyingdXso contributes, as in Leave Her to
Heaven, to the film’s chromaticism, so that the oranges and reds “appear
even more infernal than th