Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. (from The Princess Bride)
Ok, sure, Wesley and Buttercup’s kiss is epic but is it the G.O.A.T.? (Greatest of all time.)
That’s a tough one, isn’t it? There are SO MANY great kisses, in movies, in books, and on TV. It’s impossible–but fun–to try and pick just one.
For me, the best TV kiss of all time might just be Veronica and Logan’s first kiss in Season One of Veronica Mars, one of my top ten favorite TV shows. Everything about it, from the way the relationship has built up over the past 17 episodes to the music to the shock viewers felt when it happened makes it just perfect. (That shock factor also makes Buffy and Spike’s first kiss riveting as well.) And, yes, that kiss from North and South is gorgeous but it’s not quite G.O.A.T. material for me.)
My favorite movie kiss might be that iconic scene from The Notebook. They’re just so all in and it’s what the viewer wants more than anything and their chemistry is off the charts and just give me a frickin’fan already.
My G.O.A.T. book kiss scene is not even an actual kiss but a discussion about the perfect kiss. In Julie Anne Long’s What I Did for A Duke, Alexander tells Genevieve what a kiss should be like. It knocks me off my feet every time I read it.
He casually, deliberately removed his coat, folded it neatly, laid it next to him. The wind took the opportunity to play in his hair, lifting it a bit, tossing it about, letting it drop, satisfied at having mussed a duke. He leaned back on his hands. And then idly turned to her. He inhaled, and exhaled an almost long-suffering sigh. And he began in a patient, almost leisurely fashion, in a voice fashioned from dark velvet, a voice that stroked over her senses until they were lulled, to lecture directly to her as if she was a girl in the schoolroom. “A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should . . . touch places in you that you didn’t know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should . . . hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible . . .” He tipped his head back and paused to consider, as though he were envisioning this and wanted to relate every detail correctly. “It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it’s very nearly pain.” He waited, watching her face, allowing her to accommodate the potent words. Her mouth was parted. Her breathing short. She couldn’t look away. His eyes and voice held her as fast as if he’d cradled her face with his hands. And as he said them, an echo of sensation sounded in her, like a remembered dream, an instinct awakened. She thought about Mars getting ready to give Venus a good pleasuring. Stop, she should say. “And . . . ?” she whispered. “It should make you do battle for control of your senses and your will. It should make you want to do things you’d never dreamed you’d want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you’ve ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact . . .” he paused for effect “. . . haunt you for the rest of your life.
Whoa.
How about you? What’s your G.O.A.T. kiss?
Ross and Delmelza’s first kiss is tops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpqjKy9apjQ
When Buffy and Spike destroyed a house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1h4Mghhrdk
Oh my goodness… Had not seen that Spuffy clip since Season 6 aired… Thank you for posting the link!
Even though I know loving Spuffy is WRONG (channels Faith), I can’t help myself.
Loving Spuffy is right! I will argue that he is a far better man than Angel ever was or could be until the cows come home. I am 100% a Spuffy shipper!
If loving Spuffy is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
I’ve always argued that Buffy’s best partner is Riley, her most romantic partner is Angel, and her hottest partner is Spike. We should all be so lucky.
I had thought that the Buffy/Spike pairing offered the best chemistry of the couples paired with her. Their first kiss was amazing. The bringing down the house scene confirmed to me though what I already knew and didn’t want to admit at the time, which was the destructiveness at the heart of their relationship. After that key episode, I actually forced myself to let go of any Buffy/Spike hopes. In the end, that turned out to be right.
Joss Whedon didn’t believe any of his characters could have love which has always made me sad.
I used to worship Whedon and while I still enjoy a lot of his work, especially the older stuff, I have grown to have some real problems with his depictions of women, both on the page and his obsession with stick thin girl/women on his shows and in his writing. Let alone how some of them were treated in real life.
There is nothing that will make me not love Buffy. I think it is his best work and, despite the skinny girls (except for gorgeous Amber Benson), I think it’s a deeply feminist show.
I think this is true and I’m curious to see what his upcoming new show on HBO will be like. Whedon was a proud graduate of Wesleyan and loved to talk about his feminist studies there, which is great, but the reality of his life and work falls short at times.
I would argue that Spike was the best person of all of them. His feelings evolved without a soul. Even when he was with Dru, he was very caring and human. I remember one villain saying “he stunk of humanity” because of that relationship. Spike cared enough (without a soul to guide him) to undergo trials and torture to get his soul back. He made the ultimate sacrifice for Buffy even believing she didn’t really love him.
Angel was beautiful but he was a crummy person in life before he was turned and whenever his soul was taken he would have learned nothing and went right back to misery and torture. He retained no feelings or tenderness for Buffy or her friends. Without his soul he never even had friends, unlike Spike.He was like the high school boyfriend Buffy never got over.
Riley had his own demons but he was never Buffy’s equal in many ways. Maybe it’s just my bias but Spike was the only one of the three who ever seemed emotionally in tune with Buffy and was as smart and sarcastic as she was.
Spike was the most vulnerable of the three. When he loved, his love made him overcome his demons, literally.
It was the chip, I tell you! The chip!
(Seriously, though, I had it all worked out. The chip rendered Spike incapable of harming any non-demons without incurring horrible pain. I also believe the chip had another side effect: making Spike susceptible to falling in love with a non-demon, if the right circumstances presented themselves. And they did. Chipped and harmless, Spike ended up spending a lot of time with Buffy, enough to get to really know her and fall in love with her bad-ass, take-no-prisoners self. And Spike was always a romantic anyway. The chip simply allowed the object of his affections to be Buffy. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.)
Yeah, I spent wa-a-y-y too much time fantasizing about them, back in the day.
You are in good company!
I love all your choices above with the exception of The Notebook. (Yup I’m that one spoilsport that just doesn’t love that movie and finds them both dramatic and extra).
One of my all time favorite first kisses was in Last Of The Mohicans when Daniel Day Lewis just walks up to Madeleine Stowe takes her hand and off they go. When they finally kiss it’s electric.
I adore the first kiss in Amelie where they kiss each other on the cheek, the eye, side of the mouth before they kiss on the lips. It’s just so romantic and sweet.
Room with a View’s second kiss is actually my favorite where George surprises her on the stairs after tennis. Unlike the first kiss where she is just surprised, Lucy Honeychurch is *into it* and kisses him back passionately. Then of course she she starts pretending again and evicts him from her house. The ending kisses are fantastic as well.
Some of my other favorites are:
the proposal kiss from Emma (1996 version) with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam.
The final kiss at the end of Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan
When Aragorn sees Arwen is still alive in Return of the King and just grabs her and kisses her.
In the series Firefly when Inara thinks YoSaffBridge has killed Mal and runs and kisses his unconscious self. (Only to find out he was knocked out by tranquilizer lipstick that she then gets whammied with).
OK. I just have to share this story with you!
Dabney Talks to Daniel Day Lewis and It Goes Very Poorly
Ha ha I love it! And I feel very honored to get a video response! Now I can imagine you speaking when I read your posts.
Well let’s just say I knew all the way back in the 80’s when A Room With A View came out that Daniel Day Lewis was known as……is difficult the right word? And he has some demons as I remember he dropped out of a stage version of Hamlet he was starring in mid performance one night as the role was triggering his long standing issues and problems with his own father (Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis). I think he may have upped and left the country.
Isabelle Adjani said he was a cheater, wouldn’t help support their son, didn’t come to his birth and had a different girlfriend at the time he eloped with Arthur Miller’s daughter. He’s never struck me as a particularly “nice” person despite his obvious talent. (and confession- I actually liked Uncas better in the movie but DDL and MS got all the juicy love scenes).
Sorry you had a weird experience- but you got a funny story out of it! Which may be ever better. Thanks for the giggle, I need as many as I can get these days.
I so wish I had that card.
Somebody else who remembers A Room with a View. I totally second that, Although I love the kiss in the poppy field too. Well I just love this film,.
Such an amazing film! It still makes me laugh when I rewatch it. I DO NOT recommend the wretched TV remake from several years back. They thought it was a good idea to change the ending!
Always Han and Leia, and HAVE YOU SEEN THE EXTENDED VERSION: https://youtu.be/MtYo1mhXqjM
I also love Bridget and Mark Darcy’s “Nice boys don’t kiss like that”
kiss from the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary.
OMG!!!! I hadn’t seen that and now I want EVERYONE too! “heads off to share on Facebook”
Where has this been all my life!? Why did young Chrisreader not get to see this on the big screen way back in 1980?
Having read Carrie Fisher’s book The Princess Diarist somehow it makes it even more poignant for me knowing Carrie was likely still carrying a torch for Harrison and playing romantic scenes opposite him.
Rocky: Rocky and Adrian’s first kiss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59FmUOxADwQ
Today I think it would be considered “crossing a line”, but my romantic self still think it holds up pretty well.
It’s a hot scene but I think you’re right that it doesn’t hold up well in today’s culture that centers consent first and foremost.
Agreed. Adrian is happy with how it all turns out. It doesn’t bother me because she never has any regrets.
It’s pretty gentle. I know he technically stops her from leaving but I never got the sense she couldn’t go if she really wanted to. It’s actually a very sweet kiss, he’s yelled to the whole neighborhood she’s there with him and it’s very clear by the end she really likes him too. It seems like she’s not only shy, she’s afraid she is going to be made fun of or that it’s all a joke.
I’d forgotten how sweet this movie was in parts and how attractive Stallone was before he got addicted to plastic surgery.
The first Rocky movie is really a great one. I love this review:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rocky-1976
Great review. I loved Siskel and Ebert, I used to watch their show religiously in every incarnation, I like to think it helped shape my movie tastes growing up and exposed me to movies I never would have been aware of.
I haven’t seen the movie. I guess that will be another entry for my TBW list.
@Chrisreader- Thanks for putting into words what I had trouble expressing about that scene. Like you, I really got a sense that Adrian is shy but wants Rocky. And he’s very sweet and gentle with her.
By the way, if you think Mr. Stallone’s plastic surgeries were a disaster, you should see the awful before and after pictures of his mother. Mrs. Stallone was a handsome woman! I think it’s sad when celebrities go to the extreme to look a certain way when most of them probably looked fine before.
@Dabney Grinnan: Thanks for the review link!
Jackie Stallone right? I agree what a shame. It’s like Michael Jackson, I just don’t get it, he was so darn cute before! He was a huge pop idol, why did he think he needed those surgeries? So sad. Lindsay Lohan is another young and stunning person who made herself look worse.
On the other hand you have people like Raquel Welch who must have made a diabolical pact or have the best plastic surgeon ever.
Yes, Jackie Stallone- who is still alive at 98, by the way. And Michael Jackson was definitely another person who got addicted to plastic surgery.
One person who made it work was Martha Raddatz. The work she had done on her neck was a tremendous improvement.
You do know I’m married to a plastic surgeon, don’t you? ;)
There is almost not a single person we see on screen who hasn’t had something done. The vast majority of it is good work. The bad ones–Lohan, mid career Meg Ryan, the over Botoxed version of Nicole Kidman–are the ones we notice.
Check out this link for all the stars who share their plastic surgery stories. They are, I promise you, the tip of the iceberg.
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/health/g14478114/celebrities-with-plastic-surgery/
“You do know I’m married to a plastic surgeon, don’t you?” I do now! Believe me, no offense was meant. :)
Oh no worries. I personally am extremely down on bad plastic surgery. And much of the work that plastic surgeons do is reconstructive and is something that patients are wildly grateful for. I met him while he was a resident and I am exceedingly proud of the work he has done over the past 35 years. I do often find myself shaking my head at the idea that all plastic surgeons do is make bored housewives look better. And it is occasionally hilarious to see all the assumptions people make about me simply because I am married to him. (I have actually had people ask me if these really are my breasts. Which, they are.)
It’s true though that we live in an incredibly ageist society. And women in particular are judged harshly for looking older, especially at work. I have a lot of empathy for most of my husband’s patients.
Oh, yes. I agree with everything you said. Plastic surgeons are incredibly important for the reasons you mentioned.
It is indeed sad that women, celebrities or otherwise, are judged so harshly for aging naturally.
There a few reasons why this scene never worked for me. First, Rocky physically intervenes to try to prevent Adrian from leaving, which she indicates is what she wants. I would never physically plant myself in someone’s way and block them from walking away from me, and so that alone feels weird. But, I’m a woman and women tend not to take up physical space the way men do. More importantly though, I don’t like the virgin/sexually experienced male dynamic, though I know that it has been a traditionally popular trope in romances. In this scene, “no means yes,” and Adrian’s no and decision to walk away s rejected by Rocky, who instead shows her what she really wants because he knows best. We’re meant to assume that Adrian’s attempt to walk away is not what she wants and that she needs the man to show her instead. To me it’s a mainstay of romance tropes from the 70s and 80s and reminds me of how far we have come. This scene wouldn’t appear in any of the romances I read or watch today, but may still be out there in stories I don’t follow. In terms of degrees, it’s not the worst thing out there at all, but it does assert a dynamic I find problematic and it reminds me again of how grateful I am that different stories and different cultural customs prevail today.
Love that trope. It lets the guys do all the work at first. Tons of women fantasize about it because it’s great to be taken care of.