#9: Touch of Evil

I don't think there was ever another great director whose films were more tarnished and vandalised by the studio system than Orson Welles. After "Citizen Kane", the rest of his Hollywood career was an uphill battle. His masterpiece "The Magnificent Ambersons" was savagely edited without Welles' consent, the original negative of the film lost forever. The final shot was directed not by Welles, but by Robert Wise and changed it into a more acceptable happy ending.

With his final Hollywood film, "Touch of Evil", Welles still stood defiant even after the studio cut his version again without him knowing. Welles' response to this turned into a notorious 58 page letter of all the changes he wished on the film. The changes would not be made in Welles' lifetime, unfortunately, but we on the other are able to see a carefully restored version of the film the way Welles wanted it from his notes.

"Touch of Evil" is a very special film noir, and is often considered the last of the genre. Welles was a director of black and white, and used it better than any other director. In "Touch of Evil" it's as if he uses every movie trick he had learned up until then to make a truly flamboyant, accessible, and entertaining film.

We begin the film with one of the most memorable shots in movie history, one that lasts 3 minutes and 20 seconds, as we follow a bomb that is planted into the trunk of a car. We see the car drive off, and we focus on a newlywed couple Mike and Susan Vargas (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh) as they walk across the Mexican/American boarder, just as the car with the bomb drives by. The car blows up in America but the bomb is suspected to have been planted in Mexico leading to a cross/boarder investigation. Mike, who is a Mexican and is in charge of the PanAmerican Narcotics Commission offers his assistance. On the American side of law and order, we have Captain Hank Quinlan (Welles)an overweight racist cop, but with a solid reputation with his community.

As the investigation gets underway, Susan is taken to a motel to wait for Mike, but we learn that the place where she is staying is run by the local gang of drug pushers who are related to a man Mike is prosecuting. The scenes with Leigh in the motel room are downright disturbing and terrifying as it all implies gang rape, lesbianism, and drug use, all of which got past the censors through Welles' clever use of implying and not showing. It's definitely Leigh's second most horrifying experience in a motel room.

The scenes with Susan are given equal weight as the scenes with Mike Quinlan, who we learn plants evidence in order to convict a young Mexican boy of the bombing. Mike is the first to discover this and suddenly the film switches focus from the bombing to Quinlan.

Quinlan is indeed the real villain of this piece, and the central character, although Mike is the hero, and Heston's name appears first in the credits, we can see quite clearly, Welles is interested in showing us the downfall of this once great detective who lost his way.

Because Welles plays Quinlan, a certain amount of pathos is added to the character more than other film noirs would allow. Although Quinlan is corrupt, we feel for him, we learn that his wife was killed when he was a rookie cop, strangled, which is the way Quinlan kills a character in this film. The people who know Quinlan best are his partner Pete (Joseph Calleia) and former lover Tanya (Marlene Dietrich) both of whom are present at his last stand

The end of "Touch of Evil" is one of the greatest endings of cinema, an absolute gem, that seems to come more out of European film than Hollywood. Welles chooses not to give the last line to Quinlan or Mike, but instead to Tanya. It's a testament to the power of Marlene Dietrich who has a little more than a cameo in this film, yet it cold be argued she has the most memorable image. It's a treat to see her and Welles in this film together, you can sense the history between their characters and their feelings just bya glance and what isn't said between them. Dietrich and Welles were such great powerhouses, you can see there is a certain equality between them.

"Touch of Evil" shows Orson Welles late in his career still having fun at what he was doing, watching this film, you get the feeling that nothing ever phased him, since it is done in only the way he would've aloud it. It is one of the most entertaining noirs ever made, done with such style that was years ahead of anyone else.