But if the kiss could arrive at a range of moments in the narrative and could convey a range of possible meanings-from affection to desire and from illicit passion to marital bliss-there was at least one kind of kiss that remained entirely Kisses were targets for the censors, who feared that audiences might be enticed toward inappropriate passions.

From cinema’s very beginnings until the mid-1960s, Linda Williams argues, 'a kiss of variable length had to do the job of suggesting all the excitement and pleasure of intimate sexual contacts.' This was certainly true in Australia, where a limited local film industry and a dependence upon British and American studios was coupled with multiple layers of censorship, first in the place of production and then through local censorship regimes. To carry multiple meanings in the history of cinematic sex, from innocent affection to sexual passion. That we 'must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss.' Although now a classic cinematic moment, coming from a Hollywood film, this is arguably something of a hypocritical message, when placed on-screen, a kiss has often represented much more than just a kiss.

In the 1942 film Casablanca, piano-playing Sam famously sings