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kissing her, pushes her off the ledge. Dorrie’s purse sits on the suddenly
empty parapet, a handkerchief —“something blue” — fluttering in the
breeze.
“Girl Detective”
Cut to Ellen lying face-down in the sun in a black one-piece
bathing suit next to an aquamarine-blue pool at her father’s house in
Tucson. Cut again to a long shot. In the background, framed by a red
brick wall, Ellen dives into the pool; in the foreground, a black servant in
a brilliant white jacket is carrying a phone, “Miss Ellen, a Mr. Corliss is
calling!” Birds chirp in the crystalline, sun-stunned air as Ellen, drying
herself off with a yellow towel, takes the receiver of the copper-colored
phone from the servant, “Hello, Bud, you’re coming here for
Thanksgiving.”
The use of color in this scene is subtly expressive and epitomizes
the way in which a 50s noir like Kiss Me Deadly recollects the genre in
the process of reinventing it. For example, if the “cool” deep-blue sky
and pool in the first part of the scene echo the preceding “murder”
sequence, Ellen’s black bathing suit indicates that she’s still mourning
her sister’s death even as it evokes, since she’s wearing a white bathing
cap when she drives into the pool, the dominant, black-and-white palette
of classic noir. The second part of the scene has a slightly different
tonality; while the “warm” yellow towel reflects, like the sunshine, her
happiness, the “cool” copper-colored telephone underscores her
privileged status as a Kingship heiress and, more ominously, the prize
she represents for Bud.
In Levin’s novel. Bud refers to Ellen as the “girl detective,”
taunting her right before he shoots her, “No, you had to be the girl
detective! Well, this is what happens to girl detectives!” (156). In the
film, the dive symbolically links the two Kingship sisters, but Ellen,
unlike Dorrie, ultimately refuses to take the dive when push comes to
shove. Instead, she actively pursues her sister’s case, which has been
ruled a suicide, when both the police and her father have long since given
up. The turning point occurs when, after talking to Bud about their
“ballet” date that night, she opens a package that the servant has just
brought to her. The camera slowly tracks in to a medium shot of Ellen as
she sits in the right foreground in her black bathing suit, her back against
a yellow cotton robe. In the left background, there’s a red and white
umbrella (an echo of Dorrie in the first sequence); in the left foreground,
the phone sits on the table. Inside the package is a box that contains a
brown leather belt and note;