Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" is a complex, ironic examination of the relationship between the law and justice... The film must stand beside the very best in detectives genre...
Its enormous confused tracking shots, its low angles, its tormented lighting, its obscure intelligent photography, its great use of the wide-angle lens, its hard complexity and complete fictional night-city word, all represent a brilliant essay of pure cinema establishing Welles as an alarming genius, one of the greatest filmmakers with movies years ahead of their time...
"Touch of Evil" is an outstanding achievement of a great cinematic mind, displaying a powerful range of Gothic expressionism... Welles' first appearance as a corrupt used-up Texas police captain (Hank Quinlan) is no less surprising...
A police car comes to a stop to the scene of a murder and unexpectedly there is Welles, sitting in the back seat: gross, unshaven, sweaty, and with a cigar clenched between his teeth... He seems a repellent person, with "intuition," manifesting that sensation of evil, as no crime movie has managed to do since, a suggestion of corruption that is the key to the fascinating and doubtful character he plays... Welles character will cheat, lie and murder in order to prevent the truth from emerging... One hates his toughness, yet one still understands him and feels pity for him than for his victims...
Joseph Calleia, his slightly more presentable assistant, is like Dana Andrews in Otto Preminger's "Where the Sidewalks Ends," a villain with unchanged methods: he waits, watches, leaves the police work to others, remains loyal to his profession and to his bossbut could not exist without him, or in another environment...
From that moment, we are caught between admiration of his brilliant directorial effects and fascination with his characterization of Quilan, a chief able to make a quick arrest by the simple expedient of framing the most likely suspects... He appears to have been using the techniques for years, but before this he has usually fitted the frame round the guilty party... It is a performance which frequently gives great energy to the screen...
Stanley Kubrick once said that the first shot of a movie should be the most captivating... Definitely, Welles' legendary opening shot satisfies one of the key requirements of the movie mystery... Of course, Russ Metty deserves a lot of credit...
The long traveling shot starts with a close-up of a time-bomb being placed in the trunk of a car by a shadowy figure, then, the richest man in town (Rudy Lanniker) and his mistress appearing from the background, getting into the car and driving away across the border from Mexico to the United States and through the border town... By this time the roving camerathat seems never to come to a standstill, has offered to us long view of the surroundings (crumbling arches, peeling walls, poor hotels and night clubs and a lot of trash) which will enclose the plot...
While the convertible stops at a crossroad, the camera descends swiftly to introduce a Mexican gentleman, an idealistic justice department lawyer Ramon Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his bride, the blonde American Susan (Janet Leigh) walking toward the frontier...
The superlative camera tracks the couple for some time, catching again the car as both Vargas and the automobile meet at the U.S. Customs post... We see and hear a conversation between Vargas, his wife and the border guard as the vehicle moves out of the frame... We proceed with the couple about to cross the border until the bomb goes off and the car explodes... The killing is the start of the conflict between policemen from both sides of the border...
"Touch of Evil" is great and memorable for the distinguished description of its scenes, its images, its acting and its sound track... Its importance lies entirely in how the event is told 'not' in the message or material...
In addition to its wonderful opening, the film contains other outstanding sequences:
Perhaps the finest things about "Touch of Evil" is the cold, strange and unsympathetic atmosphere of its night city (narcotics, gang-rape, racism, prostitution) an almost universal corruption...
It's unlikely that there will ever be a more unpleasant or offensive or disgusting detective than Welles or a more fascinating one...
Watch for Mercedes McCambridge in it... but look quickly, or it will be too late.
Its enormous confused tracking shots, its low angles, its tormented lighting, its obscure intelligent photography, its great use of the wide-angle lens, its hard complexity and complete fictional night-city word, all represent a brilliant essay of pure cinema establishing Welles as an alarming genius, one of the greatest filmmakers with movies years ahead of their time...
"Touch of Evil" is an outstanding achievement of a great cinematic mind, displaying a powerful range of Gothic expressionism... Welles' first appearance as a corrupt used-up Texas police captain (Hank Quinlan) is no less surprising...
A police car comes to a stop to the scene of a murder and unexpectedly there is Welles, sitting in the back seat: gross, unshaven, sweaty, and with a cigar clenched between his teeth... He seems a repellent person, with "intuition," manifesting that sensation of evil, as no crime movie has managed to do since, a suggestion of corruption that is the key to the fascinating and doubtful character he plays... Welles character will cheat, lie and murder in order to prevent the truth from emerging... One hates his toughness, yet one still understands him and feels pity for him than for his victims...
Joseph Calleia, his slightly more presentable assistant, is like Dana Andrews in Otto Preminger's "Where the Sidewalks Ends," a villain with unchanged methods: he waits, watches, leaves the police work to others, remains loyal to his profession and to his bossbut could not exist without him, or in another environment...
From that moment, we are caught between admiration of his brilliant directorial effects and fascination with his characterization of Quilan, a chief able to make a quick arrest by the simple expedient of framing the most likely suspects... He appears to have been using the techniques for years, but before this he has usually fitted the frame round the guilty party... It is a performance which frequently gives great energy to the screen...
Stanley Kubrick once said that the first shot of a movie should be the most captivating... Definitely, Welles' legendary opening shot satisfies one of the key requirements of the movie mystery... Of course, Russ Metty deserves a lot of credit...
The long traveling shot starts with a close-up of a time-bomb being placed in the trunk of a car by a shadowy figure, then, the richest man in town (Rudy Lanniker) and his mistress appearing from the background, getting into the car and driving away across the border from Mexico to the United States and through the border town... By this time the roving camerathat seems never to come to a standstill, has offered to us long view of the surroundings (crumbling arches, peeling walls, poor hotels and night clubs and a lot of trash) which will enclose the plot...
While the convertible stops at a crossroad, the camera descends swiftly to introduce a Mexican gentleman, an idealistic justice department lawyer Ramon Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his bride, the blonde American Susan (Janet Leigh) walking toward the frontier...
The superlative camera tracks the couple for some time, catching again the car as both Vargas and the automobile meet at the U.S. Customs post... We see and hear a conversation between Vargas, his wife and the border guard as the vehicle moves out of the frame... We proceed with the couple about to cross the border until the bomb goes off and the car explodes... The killing is the start of the conflict between policemen from both sides of the border...
"Touch of Evil" is great and memorable for the distinguished description of its scenes, its images, its acting and its sound track... Its importance lies entirely in how the event is told 'not' in the message or material...
In addition to its wonderful opening, the film contains other outstanding sequences:
- The deplorable ambiance of a closed nightclub where Marlene Dietrich wisely advises Welles to "lay off the candy bars." "Honey, you're a mess", she says when she finally recognizes Quinlan, and (at the end of the picture) when he asks "Come on, read my future for me," she replies: "You haven't got any. Your future is all used up. Why you don't go home."
- The single shot (in the murder suspect's apartment) where Welles handles his cast with great skill... There is much overlapping conversation as everyone talks at once, and half a dozen characters are brilliantly delineated...
- When the camera meets a group of three characters crossing the street across a hotel lobby and into a restricted elevator, and rides with them slowly up to the second floor until Vargas, who has left them in the lobby, reappears at the very moment the elevator door reopens...
- The horrifying siege of Leigh at the isolated Mirador Motel by a gang of young punks...
Perhaps the finest things about "Touch of Evil" is the cold, strange and unsympathetic atmosphere of its night city (narcotics, gang-rape, racism, prostitution) an almost universal corruption...
It's unlikely that there will ever be a more unpleasant or offensive or disgusting detective than Welles or a more fascinating one...
Watch for Mercedes McCambridge in it... but look quickly, or it will be too late.