No story is complete without a good kiss — and a kiss done right, at the perfect moment,
can mark the definitive moment in a movie. That goes doubly for last kisses, too. Whether
they're long or short, bittersweet or devastating, these are the best last kisses in movie history.
Inevitably, many last kisses in the movies tend to be tinged with a touch of tragedy,
and Ridley Scott's Gladiator takes that rule to its heart-wrenching extreme.
In Gladiator, Hispano-Roman soldier Maximus faithfully serves the Roman
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who selects him to be his heir over his own son, Commodus.
Romans being Romans, Commodus decides to kill his father before the decision
becomes official. When Maximus refuses to serve the new Emperor, Commodus has him arrested.
Maximus soon escapes, however, and rides home to his wife and son — only to find that they and
everyone else on their farm have been killed by Commodus' men. It's here that Maximus tearfully
kisses his wife's scorched feet before collapsing in despair. He's then kidnapped by a slave trader,
and, well, the whole gladiator part of the movie happens.
Compounded by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard's powerful score,
this scene provides a rare glimpse of emotion in a movie better known for its epic fight sequences.
It reminds the audience that, behind Maximus' soldierly exterior, he's just a man who loves
his wife and son. It's also the moment that sets up Gladiator's iconic ending,
in which a victorious Maximus finally reunites with his family in the afterlife.
Everybody knew going in that Titanic was never going to end well. Nonetheless, you still can't
help but get emotionally invested in the romance between society girl Rose and broke artist Jack.
Jack and Rose's most famous kiss, of course, is their full-blown make-out session on the
ship's bow, long before things go wrong. But it's not their last. Now,
figuring out which of their kisses is technically their last is actually a little tricky. Obviously,
Jack and Rose don't have a lot of time for PDAs as they're trying to escape a sinking ship. Later,
however, after Jack perishes in the icy waters of the Atlantic,
Rose kisses his frozen hands in a final goodbye — and promises to never let go.
"I'll never let go. I promise."
Rose then immediately lets go. She does hold onto his memory, though, which, in hindsight,
is probably what she meant. During the movie's final scene, Jack and Rose reunite at last
on the Titanic's first-class staircase. They're surrounded by other passengers,
who cheer when the couple kisses one last time. Is this a dream? Is Rose in the afterlife?
The meaning of the scene is deliberately vague, but watching these two characters
reunite after 83 years with a kiss for the ages will thaw even the iciest of hearts.
Not all last kisses happen between lovers. Take Thelma & Louise, for example. In this movie,
best friends Thelma and Louise leave the former's controlling husband behind for a fun weekend on
the road. Instead, they end up killing a man who attacks Thelma, going on the run, picking up a
drifter, robbing a convenience store, and blowing up a truck. But the best final kiss in this movie
isn't between Thelma and her new drifter lover J.D., or between Louise and her on/off boyfriend.
Parked by the Grand Canyon with a motorcade of cops behind them, the two friends-on-the-run
decide to go out with a bang — and they mark their final moments with a kiss.
Unlike many movie kisses between women, this kiss is neither salacious nor played to titillate
straight male audience members. It's just a moment of true love between two friends. In the 20th
anniversary edition Blu-ray commentary, Susan Sarandon took credit for this moment, saying:
"I had mentioned to Geena that I was going to kiss her,
but I don't think Ridley [Scott, the director] knew."
Fortunately, Sarandon pulled it off — and a moment of movie history was born.
In Moulin Rouge! the tragedy of the last kiss between tragically impoverished writer Christian
and aspiring actress Satine is that it comes in the wake of a major victory for the couple.
The pair have finally ousted Satine's controlling patron, the Duke, and delivered their vibrant,
wild, Bohemian musical to La Belle Époque Paris. But thanks to an opening scene featuring
a devastated Christian, the audience has known all along that something is going to go wrong.
And by the time the movie's grand musical finale comes to a close,
Satine is also well aware that she is suffering from a fatal bout of consumption.
"I'm cold, I'm cold, I'm cold… Hold me."
As Christian slowly realizes what's happening, he holds her, kissing her softly
as she begs him to tell their story. Their final scene brings together the fantastical
Moulin Rouge! stylization with a sense of heartbreakingly authentic human drama.
As writer and director Baz Luhrmann told The Guardian:
"[It's about] the transition of youthful idealism to when you realize that there are things bigger
than you — people die, some relationships cannot be — and you are destroyed by that."
Theatre fans will tell you that William Shakespeare wrote the ultimate final kiss
back in the late 16th century. But some 400 years later,
master of stylistic drama Baz Luhrmann decided to put a new spin on Shakespeare's
version with his film production of Romeo + Juliet. The Shakespearean dialogue remained,
but the swords became guns, the costumes were updated, and a fish tank, of all things,
played a prominent part in the iconic couple's meet cute. Shakespeare suddenly became '90s cool,
thanks in large part to Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, who breathed life into the iconic
star-crossed lovers... and then, of course, killed them both off in the most brutal way possible.
The CliffNotes version of the ending is that Romeo, believing that Juliet is dead,
breaks into her tomb, intending to kill himself. Juliet, who is only sedated,
wakes up just as he downs a deadly poison.
"I'll kiss thy lips. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them." and the kiss
Juliet then turns Romeo's gun on herself. This morbid moment turns the hallmark of young love
into a deadly weapon, just as the couple's forbidden love ultimately led to their doom.
Shakespeare in Love takes more than a few liberties with history,
and doesn't shy away from playing with some tongue-in-cheek humor. Still,
the love story at the heart of it all feels absolutely authentic.
The wealthy Viola is prevented from acting on the London stage by both her social status and gender.
So she dresses up as a man and lands the starring role in a new play called
Ethel the Pirate's Daughter by some mediocre playwright named Will Shakespeare. Shakespeare
soon falls in love with Viola, and the two begin an affair after Shakespeare
figures out that his leading actor and his crush are the same person.
He even starts writing the play that becomes Romeo and Juliet, based on their relationship.
But these star-crossed lovers are doomed from the start. Viola is engaged to evil Lord Wessex,
and they're planning on moving to Virginia. Even though they marry on the morning of the play,
Viola rushes back to the theater. Through various circumstances,
Shakespeare and Viola end up playing Romeo and Juliet, respectively. But when the play
ends — to thunderous applause — they have to say goodbye. Viola kisses Will one more time,
then leaves without looking back. It's a devastating, unavoidable goodbye in which the
two lovers leading the story don't get what they want — which seems apt, considering the context.
For such an epic love story, Cold Mountain doesn't
have many kissing scenes — but it does make the few that happen really count.
Ada is a fancy Charleston lady who falls for silent and sturdy country boy Inman,
when she and her father move to Cold Mountain, North Carolina. In 1861, Inman goes to fight for
the Confederacy in the Civil War. The two kiss passionately before he leaves, then spend the
next three years apart, only able to communicate with each other through the letters they write.
After a ferocious battle, Inman abandons the army and sets out on the long journey
home. The two are eventually, uh, "reacquainted", but the next day,
Inman gets into a shootout with a Home Guardsman who's been pursuing Ada. He kills the man but is
fatally wounded himself. Ada holds him as he dies, kissing his forehead and comforting him.
By the time you get to Inman and Ada's last kiss,
you've seen the both of them go through so much to reunite that it feels blisteringly
unfair that they don't get a happy ending. Sadly, though, their ill-fated romance tells
the same story of countless lovers who have been doomed by wartime and human cruelty.
Not many teens have a ghost as a best friend, but in 1995's Casper, Kat is used to the supernatural,
thanks to her dad's paranormal investigations. As a result, she meets the ghost Casper when
they move into his ancestral home, Whipstaff Manor. Although their initial meeting is a
little awkward, Casper wins over Kat and her dad, James. But there's more to it than that — Casper
has had a crush on Kat since even before they met, having seen a news report about James' work.
Sadly, the whole being dead thing throws a significant wrench in their would-be romance.
However, in the basement, Kat and Casper conveniently discover the Lazarus machine,
which Casper's father built to bring his son back to life. But there's only enough formula
for one ghost-to-human transformation, and when James dies in an accident, Casper sacrifices his
shot at resurrection so that Kat doesn't have to lose her dad. As thanks, Kat's mom returns from
the afterlife and makes Casper human... but only for the night of Kat's Halloween party.
Casper dances with Kat, and they kiss, right as he turns back into his ghost form. It's sweet,
it's sad, and it's also a little funny. What more could you ask of a final kiss?
The sexiest kiss in 1990's Ghost obviously happens during that famous pottery scene.
But the last kiss between Demi Moore's Molly and Patrick Swayze's Sam is by far the most
emotionally resonant of the movie — and may be one of the all-time greats, to boot.
After being killed by a mugger, Sam becomes a ghost. You know, hence the name of the movie.
While he can see his girlfriend Molly, she doesn't know he's there. Sam then
stumbles across a supposedly fake psychic, Oda Mae, who can actually hear and see him.
Oda Mae tries to convince Molly that she's communicating with Sam, but a grief-stricken
Molly is skeptical. Meanwhile, Sam learns to move physical objects with his ghostly energy,
and eventually, he rescues Oda Mae and Molly from the man who had him killed.
Suddenly, Molly can see and hear Sam, too. He realizes that, now that he's saved her and avenged
his own death, he has to move to the afterlife. So Sam and Molly say goodbye with a kiss.
"It's amazing, Molly. The love inside… you take it with you."
Swayze and Moore nail the bittersweetness of this final kiss. In fact, it was Swayze's audition for
this scene that convinced the previously skeptical filmmakers to cast him, and Moore perfectly
balances her character's frankly understandable sense of confusion, joy, and sadness. Altogether,
it just works. There's a reason this was the biggest movie of the year in 1990, you know.
If there is a Movie Kisses Hall of Fame — and there should be — The
Notebook definitely has a place in it, thanks entirely to one particular scene.
Lumber mill worker Noah and heiress Allie defy her family's attempts to tear them apart
and triumphantly reunite with a passionate kiss in the middle of a summer rainstorm.
That moment won Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams the coveted
MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss in 2005 and immediately went down in cinema history.
But it's Noah and Allie's final kiss that's the most powerful. Having grown old together,
they both come down with various illnesses and are taken to the same hospital. Allie,
who can barely remember Noah, is in the dementia ward, while Noah is in for a heart
attack. But Noah sneaks into Allie's room, and she briefly recognizes him.
After the two decide that they want to pass away together, they kiss one last time.
The kiss in the rain has all the passion of a long-delayed young
romance. But the final kiss contains the true love and understanding of a couple
who really lived up to their promise to love each other until the end, no matter what.
James Bond is lucky in lust but never in love. In 2006's Casino Royale, however, it looked like
the playboy spy had finally met his match, both romantically and professionally, in Vesper Lynd.
"So as charming as you are, Mr. Bond, I will be keeping my eye on our government's money,
and off your perfectly formed arse."
"You noticed."
The two make it through a dangerous plot involving shady organizations, creepy villains, and an
eye-watering torture scene, and are rewarded for it with a romantic vacation in Venice. Bond even
plans to resign from MI6... until he learns that Vesper has betrayed him, having stolen the money
Bond won in a high-stakes poker game on behalf of the people holding her former lover hostage.
When the deal goes bad, Vesper is taken captive by bad guys,
and Bond manages to take them out, one-by-one. But as the building they're in starts to sink,
Vesper locks herself in an elevator, and refuses to let Bond save her. He's eventually able to
get her out and back to the surface, but his kiss of life quickly turns into a kiss goodbye.
Now, Bond movies have had their fair share of last kisses over the years, but this one is
particularly special. Bond's farewell to the one woman he truly loved resonates well beyond the
end of the movie, and sets up the character's arc for the rest of Daniel Craig's time in the role.
Otherwise known as Wonder Woman, Diana Prince has had no experience kissing human men
when she and US pilot Steve Trevor first meet. But the unlikely pair still pull
off a truly romantic final kiss — before hero duty calls, of course.
After Wonder Woman has marched through the No Man's Land of 1917
and liberated the village of Veld, a well-deserved celebration is in order.
So Steve offers to teach her how to dance like humans do.
"You're awfully close."
"That's what it's all about."
But although sparks fly, neither Steve nor Diana can imagine living an ordinary life together.
They go to a hotel room in the village and nervously kiss... and that's all the
audience gets to see. Sadly for Diana, the war gets between them, and Steve ends up
leaving her in the middle of a battle — with a declaration of love, but no goodbye kiss.
If you're the kind of person who gets a kick out of watching the slow,
painful disintegration of a once-hopeful romance that has long become tortured and twisted,
then boy is Blue Valentine the movie for you.
Cindy and Dean fall in love at second sight when she's a pre-med student
and he's delivering furniture. When Cindy finds out she's pregnant with her ex-boyfriend's child,
she and Dean get married. Five years later, their relationship is cracking under his drinking,
their money worries, and her despondency. Despite their best attempts at salvaging the relationship,
things only get worse from there.
Eventually, Cindy tells Dean they have to break up, but he tries to convince her that they should
stay together. He walks over to her and hugs her, even as Cindy tenses up in his arms, and kisses
her on the head. The physical contradiction of his hug and her stiffness reflects the
simple and tragic fact that they don't fit together emotionally anymore. What was once
a gesture of love becomes a difficult goodbye, and the scene's closing moments, intercut with
footage from their wedding day, shows just how far they've come from their hopeful, younger selves.
The lovers in 1945's Brief Encounter mostly convey their electric chemistry through,
well, basically anything other than kissing. So when they do finally smooch, sparks really sizzle.
Laura is a bored housewife with a kind but dull husband in 1940s England.
Her weekly highlight is taking the train to the nearby town of Milford.
Waiting at the Milford station one day, she meets a charming doctor, Alec,
who's also married with kids. After accidentally meeting again, they begin a covert relationship.
Eventually, after a few near-misses, the couple decide they can't continue their
affair and spend one final day together. The heart-wrenching twist is that they don't even
get a private goodbye. At their last meeting, they're interrupted by one of Laura's friends.
Alec has to leave to catch his train, and all he can do is squeeze Laura on the shoulder.
The final kiss of the movie takes place earlier, when they're also interrupted by the arrival of
a friend. And even this was a brave move on the filmmakers' part. Brief Encounter was considered
so scandalous because of its adultery that it was initially banned in Ireland.
While movies today are freer to show kisses — even adulterous kisses — this one is
all the more powerful for being a daring expression of rule-breaking passion.
If there's one movie that best sums up the burden of impossible love,
it's Casablanca. Grouchy American Rick Blaine is keeping a low profile in Casablanca during World
War II when his long-lost love, Ilsa Lund, walks into his gin joint... accompanied by her husband,
Czech Resistance leader Victor Lazlo. Rick hasn't seen Ilsa since the previous summer, when they
fell in love in Paris, only for her to abandon him suddenly. Now, she and Lazlo are trying to
reach America to escape the Nazis, and Rick has the exit papers they need in order to get out.
Reunited and still very much in love, Ilsa and Rick plan to use the papers to leave together.
But Rick has a change of heart, and puts Lazlo and Ilsa on the plane,
knowing that Lazlo needs Ilsa to continue his important work. Many people think that Rick
and Ilsa's last kiss happens at the airport, but come on — that would have been kind of a giveaway
to her husband. The kiss actually happens at Rick's apartment the night before, when Ilsa
declares her love for Rick at long last. Ilsa and Rick then release all that pent-up longing in a
perfectly-shot, dramatically soundtracked kiss — which, inevitably, proves to be their last.
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