The retrospective opening of Killer's Kiss alternates between Davey's preparations for a boxing match and Gloria's workday. Cuts between apartments, commutes, and entertainment venues create a sense of simultaneity before their stories intersect.
Two Routines Organized by the Montage
In a recollection of the early days, Davey prepares for a fight while Gloria gets ready to work at Pleasure Land. The film presents actions that make sense on their own: getting dressed, traveling, keeping a schedule, and entering places associated with a profession. The montage brings them closer by alternating between the two protagonists. Before they truly meet, viewers recognize that they share a city and are in similar circumstances at the same time. Narrative continuity emerges from comparing their movements, not from a conversation foreshadowing their future encounter.
The facing windows establish a spatial relationship between the two homes. Their visual proximity serves as a point of connection: viewers understand that Davey and Gloria have neighboring routines that have not yet become a shared story. When the action moves to the boxing ring and the dance hall, that relationship is maintained through alternating scenes. The windows as a means of looking into someone else's life develop their perceptual significance; parallel editing matters for the way its cuts and transitions organize two lines of work.
Parallel editing doesn't require every event to happen at precisely the same second. The film can suggest that the workdays broadly overlap without making every cut a mark of mathematical synchronization. What matters is that viewers compare corresponding stages: preparation, travel, work, and reactions to what happens. Repeating this structure reveals similarities, such as the public exposure of the protagonists' bodies, as well as differences, such as their working conditions and the risks each one takes.
From Parallel Action to Intersecting Stories
The broadcast of the fight in Rapallo's office creates a concrete connection between the separate paths. Gloria and her boss watch what happens to Davey; the boxer doesn't know that his defeat is being discussed there. The montage no longer merely alternates between actions; it begins to give characters different information. A sports broadcast also becomes an event in the dance hall. Television as a Mediator examines that reception, while the overall structure shows how a cut can change the meaning of an already familiar line of action.
Differences in pace help distinguish the settings. Davey's preparation has a rhythm associated with athletic concentration; traveling through the city introduces more open movement; and the nighttime entertainment at Pleasure Land establishes a different sense of duration and perspective. The film doesn't maintain a uniform tempo or use the same shot length in every situation. The interplay of cuts, movement within the frame, and sound creates an alternation that viewers can follow without being told the chronology at every turn.
Repeating similar locations helps measure the narrative's progress. Seeing a character leave home, travel, or return allows viewers to notice small changes from one day to the next without explaining every transition in dialogue. The montage thus builds a system of expectations: when two actions appear close together, viewers expect them to eventually intersect, even though the characters don't yet realize that possibility. Their later encounter changes how those parallel routines are understood in retrospect.
When Davey hears Gloria's screams, the closeness between the two storylines is no longer merely visual or temporal. The action compels him to leave his apartment and enter his neighbor's. The parallel structure becomes an encounter. This transition is more meaningful because the film has spent time showing that they share a space without knowing about each other. Their connection therefore doesn't seem entirely arbitrary: it happens in an environment whose relationships the montage has already established.
Continuity, Rhythm, and Perspective
The alternation also shapes how much viewers know about each character. By following Gloria at work, the film reveals circumstances Davey doesn't know about. By following the boxer's preparations, it shows a vulnerability that Gloria only partly sees through the television. This distribution of information keeps the film from being simply Davey's spoken account translated into images. Although there is a retrospective voice, the montage builds a perspective broader than that of the narrator. The Overall Structure of the Flashback explores that distinction across the film.
Continuity is maintained through cues of place, activity, and direction of movement. Viewers don't need to locate every street in New York City to understand that one day is leading toward a boxing match and the other toward the dance hall. Clarity comes from identifying the different dramatic functions and recognizing when an image from one setting reappears in the other. Alternation avoids lengthy explanations while also planting relationships that will become crucial when Rapallo emerges as a threat.
The opening montage shows how the film turns ordinary routines into narrative promises. Before the assault or crime, there is already a structure of neighboring lives that remain unaware of each other. The alternation builds anticipation because viewers expect the two storylines to cross; when they do, the connection carries the weight of everything shown before. There's no need to impose a general theory of Kubrickian montage on such a precise technique. Its effect can be described by looking at two jobs, two apartments, a television broadcast, and the moment a warning signal calls someone to action.