The Top 10 Best Screen Kisses Ever

Ah, Swayze and Moore! Although this film has long since been discarded by most as a prime example of mid eighties uber-schmalz, I firmly believe it is time to get retro wallow in this film's sheer mass appeal to our lowest cuddly instincts. The particular tongue-tonselling extravaganza has Ms Moore (playing Molly) spinning her pottery wheel to the tune of “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers. Sam (Patrick Swayze) comes up behind her and they create a distinctly phallic looking object while canoodling.

Toe curling, irritating, pop video love between to people as shallow as their pottery? I don't care and I don't apologize. I love it!

This kiss really blew me away when I first saw it. “A Room With A View” was one of Merchant Ivory's adaptations of an E M Forster novel and as such is about unfettered love conquering buttoned-up Edwardian ideas of morality and sexuality. The two leads, Bonham Carter at her prettiest and Sands in his prime, bleed sexuality longing to be free throughout the film. This is the moment when in an unexpected and impetuous moment, George Emerson (Sands) kisses Lucy Honeychurch (Bonham-Carter) and her inner feelings are awakened. This leads to, well, you will have to watch the film. The whole sequence, in a wheat field, is beautifully shot and breathtaking!

For most people, the kiss they remember from this film is the one between Eliot and a school mate while the former is under the influence of an inebriate alien, due to their telepathic link. That particular kiss is then linked to John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara embrace from “The Quiet Man” (which does not make this list - sorry. Although memorable, the one that does it for me is the kiss between Gertie and ET right at the end when ET is about to go back home. Lovely, brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye each time. Hush now, you cynics, hush!

The moment when the viewer realized - with some relief - that this was an outer space epic not a film about incest. Han Solo finally gets the girl and Luke has to do with his hand that is now missing. We all though that Han was not going to get there when Leia announced that she “would rather kiss a wookie” but good old animal magnetism won out in the end, I guess. One shudders at the thought of an ageing Han Solo kissing. One hopes that Harrison Ford does not make the “Connery mistake” when considering the plotlines for the new Indiana Jones film!

The kiss of death! You may not have been expecting to see this in this list, but this is one of the best Hollywood kisses ever, despite the fact that it is not sexual, funny or schmaltzy. It is a kiss to send a shiver down the spine. Here Don Michael (Pacino) has worked out that it is Fredo, his own brother, who is the traitor he has been seeking. He walks up to Fredo and clasps him firmly around the neck, then kisses him hard on the mouth. “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart, you broke my heart.” Cue one of the quickest fishing trips of the twentieth century.

This makes my list because it is a double whammy! It's a gay kiss which is also a kiss of infidelity. Ouch! A double forbidden kiss, this is the moment where Jack Twist and Ennis Delmar are reunited after their time on the mountain, and the pent up longing that has built up over the years just bursts through with violent passion. Some people do not like gay kissing on the screen (hey! Get with the century!) but even they must admit that this is one hell of a kiss! The extra “oh my god” factor is that the two men are seen by Delmar's wife when they assume they are well hidden. Michelle Williams (who played the wife, Alma) should have got a Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant, dumfounded then angry woman scorned.

This is a favourite and one that has been spoofed many times on TV and on film. The Tramp takes The Lady (who he calls Pidge - short for Pigeon) to a little Italian place that he knows for a spot of light supper. They eat the same strand of spaghetti and their heads are drawn inexorably closer as they blithely chew their pasta. Finally, when their heads meet, they have this lovely little kiss. It's not a big moment and it quite understated for Disney, which is what make sit special. Plus I dare you not to go “aaaw” when it happens!

The aggressive, snarly, taken kiss! Ladies, don't you just love it? In this scene Scarlett has just given Rhett Butler the cold shoulder, the shallow little minx that she is. Rhett grabs her, holds her so she can't get away and gives her a kiss of such ferocity that you think her face may cave in at any moment. Then he picks her up and carries her upstairs as she screams at the top of her lungs for him to stop. Upstairs, very daring for a film made at this time! Although most women may not want something like this to happen to them, it must be noted that they too can be the sexual aggressor. Remember Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot”? On the yacht with Tony Curtis it is she who will not take no for an answer!

I am a sucker for this one every time! In Hollywood films it is sometimes the location for which the kiss is remembered. Again, an adulterous kiss (Deborah Kerr's character is married) this is made all the more memorable because of the setting on a lush and beautiful Hawaiian beach. The fact that the actors were possibly two of the most beautiful people on the planet at the time, also adds to the effect. This sequence takes the breath away even now, so many decades later. Unlike many of the films in this list, however, most people would be at a loss to name the film, let alone recount the plot, but most recognize this most iconic of smoochy moments.

Hitchcock put a huge amount of effort in to getting his films right and even more so when it came to the clinch - the scene where the mains characters finally kiss. He even managed to break the film censorship rules of the day, in “Notorious”. Here he takes the beautiful pre-princess Grace Kelly and the recumbent James Stewart. Kelly makes her first appearance in the film and moves slowly towards the sleeping Stewart. You see a close up of his face and a shadow moving over it which turns in to a close up of Kelly as she leans to kiss him. Stewart wakes up and sees (as we do) this drop dead gorgous woman in front of him. As far as framing and execution goes, the best film kiss ever committed to celluloid.