TOUCH OF EVIL
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. October Films Director: Orson Welles Writer: Orson Welles, novel by Whit Masterson Cast: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia
Like "Touch of Evil," "L.A. Confidental" is a noir film pitting a corrupt cop against an honest policeman who rises above the muck. Both have bleak world views, are richly detailed, and are on the long side in running time. Both feature Oscar- worthy stars. But if you liked Curtis Hanson's 1997 blockbuster, you will not necessarily go for Orson Welles's 1958 work, "Touch of Evil." The Welles picture is re-released at this time in a newly edited version, one in which production editor Rick Schmidlin takes into account a 58-page set of notes dashed off by its famed director to improve the final cut, while Walter Murch does the actual polishing. Looking at the black-and-white detective story in today's eyes, you may well find it too stagey (as I did), with a hackneyed, contrived ending. As such, "Touch of Evil" may be of value principally to film scholars and buffs, fans of Welles who feel the great man can do no wrong, and young people interested in seeing what the Welles fuss is all about.
The story itself is nothing much, and we can see why Universal-International, the studio which owned the film, felt it would be accepted as a B-movie, and why American critics were largely luke-warm about the production. The narrative opens with a bang, as a mysterious man photographed from a distance places dynamite in the trunk of a large car on the California side of the Mexican border. Moments later, a guy with his stripper girl friend hops in, and ust as he drives across the frontier his car explodes. By luck, Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston), an honest Mexican narco who has just walked over to the Mexican side with his new American bride Susan (Janet Leigh), interrupts his honeymoon to investigate the crime. (Since Vargas had for a while been harassing a drug dealer, Grandis, the Grandis clan are seeking revenge, which they get by later kidnapping Vargas's new wife.) But Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), an outrageously fat American police chief, takes over the case determined to find the perp even if a closing of the case requires that he frame some seedy Mexican. We have no idea how an American cop is able to go beyond his jurisdiction and terrorize Mexicans into confessing to a crime which has taken place on Mexican territory, but simply must accept this flaw for the sake of the tale.
"Touch of Evil" is in no way another "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles' 1941 movie which some consider the greatest film of all time. This re-edited version conforms more to the director's wishes than the original 1958 release. For example, the opening explosion is no longer marred by a show of the film's credits and the sound track is replete with the tinny sounds that Welles favored. It's still a B-movie, though re- released at a time in which our $8 no longer brings us a B- movie as a double-feature. The ado is based rather on some thematic challenges which Welles devised for the 1958 screen and for the inventive photography implemented at a time in which special effects were still in a neolithic stage.
Thematically, Welles dabbled with ideas considered daring for its time. The romantic couple are interracial, the blond, sassy, all-American Susan taking her honeymoon with the upright Mexican, Vargas. The American cop is the unscrupulous one; the Mexican, the ethical model. Sexual references are highlighted, as Vargas and Susan kiss passionately from time to time only to have the consummation of their marriage delayed by events which overtake them. Even here, the couple show signs of conflict in the midst of their honeymoon, with Susan protesting her husband's choice of venue and insisting on leaving the area, without him if necessary. The kidnap scene hints at a gang bang, as smarmy members of the Mexican underworld, who have just kidnapped Susan and shut her into a motel in the middle of nowhere, approach her menacingly. The film also has engaging, even campy, portrays by actors like cigar-chomping Marlene Dietrich who had once loved Quinlan and Dennis Weaver as a nervous, seemingly retarded night man in the desolate motel.
Cinematically, Welles dabbles in imagery with which he first experimented in "Citizen Kane." Though this time around he does not use the spinning tabloid-like replicas across the screen as he did in 1941, his images are dark and disturbing, an outward representation of the inner world of the dissolute American cop. Particularly murky are the canal waters which appear in the film's climactic scene, actually filmed in Venice, California--which substitutes for the seedy Mexican border town. The shot considered a technical master stroke does not look like much today: while Quinlan third-degrees the suspect in the latter's home, the single camera follows the two on a crab dolly from room to room, the imagery captured in a single set of frames. Welles also putters with the cross- cutting of scenes, displayed more readily in this re-edited version, with activities of different locales photographed so that the actions seem simultaneous. The film also uses sustained washes of sound rather than an operatic scoring, the latter being the traditional choice of directors of such stories. Most of all, Welles has himself photographed from low-angle shots, his already corpulent body made even stockier by padding, his features becoming steadily more repugnant as he descends deeper into his own mental deterioration.
All in all, though, the movie shows a simplistic conflict of good vs. evil and even in its own time, its distribution was scant and unprofitable. "Touch of Evil" is still a B-movie.
Not Rated. Running time: 115 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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