But does it measure up to the longest kiss in film history?
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: Word has it that the dashing and talented actor Sushant Singh Rajput has created a Bollywood record for the longest kiss, when he locked lips with the ravishing actress Swastika Mukherjee, in the upcoming film Detective Byomkesh Bakshy.
The report by DNA had director Dibakar Banerjee stating he wanted a natural reaction from his actors, and did not inform Rajput of the long kissing scene he had in mind. The actors did the shot, which did not state how long it went for, but needless to say they did not disappoint the director.
Kissing is a relatively new phenomenon in Bollywood films. Even yesteryear bold films like Basu Bhattacharya’s Aastha – which had explicit love making scenes of the time, and indeed even now, between Rekha and Om Puri, and Rekha with Navin Nischol – desisted from showing mouth to mouth kissing.
But in the last decade, actors like Emraan Hashmi and John Abraham have bolstered their career with some bold kissing scenes, and other actors like Rajput are now getting a reputation as ‘serial kissers’ after his earlier performance in ‘Shudh Desi Romance’.
Kissing scenes in Hollywood, however, goes a long way back.
The Kiss, in 1896, was perhaps the first film to show male-female co-stars lock lips, with May Irwin and John Rice becoming instant celebrities, and made the film too a hit.
The first open-mouth kiss, however, took another three decades to happen. In Flesh and the Devil (1926), real life lovers John Gilbert and Greta Garbo set the screen on fire with their passionate kisses.
And while actors like Hashmi and Rajput may revel in their persona as ‘serial kissers’, actor John Barrymore took care of all of that in just one film, Don Juan, which came out in 1926. The film had Barrymore kiss his female co-stars a record number of 119 times, an unbeaten record to the day.
John Abraham and Bipasha Basu have set the screen on fire with their kissing and intimate scenes in ‘Jism’, but one of the most passionate kissing scenes in film history truly belongs to the film ‘From Here To Eternity (1953), which saw Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr ‘s unabashed kissing lead to censors saying it was too erotic.
Incidentally, Dibakar Banerjee may have taken a leaf out of the film’s director Fred Zinnemann’s book, as it was reported that Zinneman took the decision for the kiss impromptu and then improvised it.
The audience will have to wait for the release of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy to find out how long really did Rajput and Mukherjee lock lips for. But the existing record for the longest kiss in the history of films belongs to the 2010 feature film Elena Undone, which saw Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey kiss each other uninterrupted for 3 minutes and 24 seconds.