Around 18 seconds long, it depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical The Widow Jones.
[3] According to Charles Musser the film was released in either April or May 1896,[4] and was publicized in a sponsored article in the New York World about actors kissing on stage.
[7][better source needed] The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown.
One contemporary critic wrote, "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting.
For a number of years, it was believed that a showing of The Kiss was the first film publicly shown in Canada, projected in West End Park, Ottawa, on July 21, 1896.