TOUCH OF EVIL (director/writer: Orson Welles; screenwriter: from the novel "Badge of Evil" by Whit Masterson; cinematographer: Russell Metty; editors: Aaron Stell/Virgil Vogel; cast: Charlton Heston (Ramon Miguel "Mike" Vargas), Janet Leigh (Susan Vargas), Orson Welles (Hank Quinlan), Joseph Calleia (Pete Menzies), Akim Tamiroff (Uncle Joe Grandi), Mercedes McCambridge (Butch Hoodlum), Marlene Dietrich (Tanya), Joanna Moore (Marcia Linnekar), Mort Mills (Assistant D.A. Schwartz), Zsa Zsa Gabor (Owner of a nightclub), Val de Vargas (Pancho), Harry Shannon (Gould), Joseph Cotten (Police Doctor), Dennis Weaver (Motel Worker), Victor Millan (Sanchez); Runtime: 111; Universal; 1958)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Truly one of the greatest films ever made, but one steeped in controversy ever since cinema's boy genius Orson Welles, on his return to Hollywood after being away for 10 years, was asked to play the part of the film's corrupt police chief...but since the film didn't have a director, the film's star, Charlton Heston, suggested to the people at Universal that they get Orson to direct it (this is Heston's version). And direct it he did, pouring into this fantastically shot black-and-white classical noir film, a tale about murder, betrayal between friends, the vile actions of a porcine sheriff, and many other controversial themes for the 1950s including gang rape, racism, sexual ambiguity, drugs, and wholesale police corruption. It was magnificently photographed by emphasizing the contrasts between dark and light shades as filmed by the great cinematographer Russell Metty, which abetted the imaginative tale, whose main story is about the downfall of the sleazy, obese lawman played with sheer brilliance by Orson.
It's a B-film more powerful and hard-boiled than the weak-minded upper-studio heads at Universal could handle. So they did what dullards seem to do when faced with a genius they don't comprehend, they tried to ruin Orson's film by re-editing it, and one of their studio hack directors, a man named Harry Keller, came in to redo parts of the film after Orson left the country to try and get backing for the Don Quixote project he was interested in doing next. Orson pleaded with the studio to keep the film intact, he even sent them a 58-page memo telling them exactly how he wanted the film presented and stood fast on any changes. The studio kept the memo, but made three different versions and released the film ignoring Orson's wishes. The video that came out in the '70s was an interpretation of the three re-edited versions, which was far removed from the way Orson wanted it seen. The film ended up as a box office disappointment, giving ammo to those in Hollywood who said that he could only make an art film and not a commercial one. Orson refused to recognize the version that Universal sent to the movie theaters as his film, in fact he called it an 'odious thing.'
Never fully receiving the recognition that the film should have gotten for the masterpiece it was, it was even considered by some film critics to be a disappointing Welles film, not comparable to his masterpiece of "Citizen Kane." The film, nevertheless, got recognized abroad, especially by the French New Wave directors and eventually the film was starting to get a following among young intellectuals in this country and started to get its just recognition for the poetically visionary and original film it was. It was a film that did things films never did before, both technically and as a hard-hitting Baroque thriller. It was the first film to have natural dialogue in a moving car. It shot its now famous opening scene in a long tracking shot without credits or titles, that lasted 3-minutes without a cut and kept the background natural sounds of the street, instead of the Henry Mancini soundtrack, as the newlyweds strolled amidst the tawdry bars, strip clubs and sleaze of Los Robles, the run-down town on the Mexican side of the border. It is arguably the greatest opening shot in film history because of its visual impact in setting up the feature's characters and the tenseness of the story that was to follow. Orson used a hand-held camera and specialized not only in wide-angle shots but by his constant intercutting, he was able to keep the action flowing and the story suspenseful. The film had been restored somewhat by 1978 for its video distribution and it picked up some running time from how it was first shown at 96 minutes and now it was back to its original time of 108 minutes. In the 1990s the film was finally pieced together from the memo Orson sent the studio and the hack director's scenes were cut, and it picked up an additional three minutes. The effort to restore the film to the way Orson originally shot it, allowed the story to become clearer and for the film to have the shape the artist wanted it to have. This is about the closest we could get to the way Orson filmed it, since he passed away in 1985 and we have no other idea about what else he may have wanted to do with the film. He never made a Hollywood film since, as the studio blackballed him.
The film opens in a Mexican border town in California; the actual location of the film was in Venice, California, once a prosperous resort town, but now is run-down, surrounded by oil wells and has a seedy look to it, making it look just right for an unsavory border town. Mike Vargas (Heston) is a Mexican police investigator coming back to his country to be a witness at the trial of the narcotic dealers he arrested, who are members of the Grandi family. Vargas is someone who is well-educated, speaks a perfect English and has connections to the powers in the Mexican government. His new bride is an American named Susan (Leigh). She is a pretty blonde, who is accompanying her husband to the trial in Mexico City and calling this trip their honeymoon. But the story immediately has a strange twist to it, as someone plants a ticking time bomb in the car of the wealthy businessman Mr. Linnekar, who has just crossed over the border from Mexico when the bomb kills him and the stripper who is in the car with him.
The crime takes place on the American side, so the notorious police chief Harry Quinlan (Welles) is called in to investigate. Vargas is worried that the bomb was planted on the Mexican side of the border and is afraid that his country might be involved in some sort of international incident, so he sticks around to watch over the investigation. He foolishly leaves Susan alone on the Mexican side to wait for him at their hotel, but she gets intercepted by a punk kid named Pancho, who brings her to a big eared, toupee wearing character called "Uncle Joe" Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), who schemes up a plan to intimidate her and stop Vargas from testifying at the trial of his mobster brother. To Susan's regrets, the Mexicans act as despicable as she surmised they would, as she can't wait to get back to America.
The film gets more complex as the police immediately arrest a Mexican shoe clerk named Sanchez, who has been dating Linnekar's daughter and living off her money, against the wishes of her father. There is no proof against him, but Quinlan catches criminals by using his intuition and when he needs evidence, he is in the habit of planting it. He has a vendetta against criminals ever since his wife was strangled and the murderer was never found. Vargas knows that dynamite was planted in Sanchez's apartment by Quinlan, and thereby cannot let the arrest of Sanchez slide, as he goes on the hunt to gather evidence against Quinlan to prove that he is someone who has a history of framing suspects.
Spoiler: For those who don't want to follow the rest of the story, please stop reading at this point and resume reading the last paragraph, which makes some further points about the film.
The film tells three stories at this point, as it intercuts between Vargas working with the honest Assistant DA Schwartz (Mills) to get the info on all of Quinlan's arrests, and it tells the other story of Vargas's wife, who Vargas neglects because he gets too busy with Quinlan. Susan is being intimidated by Grandi's relatives in the motel she is alone at, who are threatening to gang rape her. Her only help can be from someone who is not capable of helping, a nutty night clerk, played by Dennis Weaver with manic craziness, who has more tics than a dog with fleas. Vargas is unaware that the motel is owned by Uncle Joe, at this point he is only interested in looking out for the interest of Mexico and his career, forgetting for a moment about his wife until guilty feelings creep up on him and thoughts of her alone with only low-class Mexicans around her sends chills up his spine. But the main story is about Quinlan, whose 30 year career as a crime fighter is about to come falling down, as he is now forced to conspire with Uncle Joe to frame Vargas's wife as a junkie and make out that Vargas is a narcotic dealer, in order for him to ruin Vargas and stop him from exposing him.
All these three stories come together in a fantastically lively way. Suzy is trapped in her room by Grandi's young punks, lesbians and drug-induced thugs, and she is forcefully drugged and probably a victim of a gang rape. She is then brought to a different hotel on the Mexican side of the border, surrounded with drug paraphernalia to make it look like she's a drug addict. Quinlan uses this opportunity to strangle Uncle Joe in her room and make it look like Susan did it. But Quinlan's best friend and most devoted follower, Sergeant Menzies (Calleia), discovers Quinlan's cane in the room and realizes he can't look the other way any more, since he also knows Vargas is hot on Quinlan's trail and he wrestles with his conscience and decides to work with Vargas by having a concealed microphone taped to his body while Vargas records Quinlan's confession on a tape recorder from a short distance away. This is the first time in 18 years that the once alcoholic Quinlan has gone on a drinking binge and when he is confronted by Menzies, he is reeling from drunkeness.
Before Quinlan meets with Menzies, there is an intriguing scene where Quinlan goes to his old flame's apartment, where a player-piano cuts into their conversational space. He hasn't seen her for a long time and she barely recognizes him as he has become very fat (it's the padding) and walks in a lumbering way. She's a gypsy fortune-teller tart called Tanya (Dietrich), who reads the tarot cards to tell him that his future is all used up. Upon meeting Menzies, he senses it's too late, that he talked into the machine giving away his guilt and he thereby shoots Menzies, still hoping to frame Vargas for that murder. But as his confession is played back to Schwartz, who has just arrived on the scene to tell Vargas that his wife is OK, Menzies manages to kill Quinlan before he dies. The subtle beauty of this scene, is in the restored version, where it looks as if the machine killed him. Then Tanya returns to view Quinlan's body lying in the shallow ditch amid the strewn garbage and Dietrich ends the film with the best film quote ever to end a film on, when asked about him, she replies, "What does it matter what you say about people... !"
Fans of the cinema should be pleased with this restored work and after seeing it will have a chance to judge for themselves which version is the masterpiece. There should be no doubt about what that choice should be. For cinefiles, thanks must go out to those who put in such a worthwhile effort to get this restoration accomplished. Jonathan Rosenbaum, one of the finest film critics today, published a large portion of Welles's memo in Film Quarterly a few years ago and thereby got the ball rolling to restore the film. His article attracted the attention of producer Rick Schmidlin, who interested both Universal and the Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch ("The Conversation") to restore the film according to Welles's memo, which they did and is the version I reviewed.
REVIEWED ON 12/4/2000 GRADE: A+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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