Film: Notorious
Year: 1946
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant
The legendary kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was designed to skirt the Hays Code that restricted kisses to no more than 3 seconds each.A kiss could last three seconds. We just kissed each other and talked, leaned away and kissed each other again. Then the telephone came between us, then we moved to the other side of the telephone. So it was a kiss which opened and closed; but the censors couldn’t and didn’t cut the scene because we never at any point kissed for more than three seconds. We did other things: we nibbled on each other’s ears, and kissed a cheek, so that it looked endless, and became sensational in Hollywood.
- Ingrid Bergman: My Story, 1980, p. 160
