TOUCH OF EVIL

'''Touch of Evil''' (1958) is considered one of the last examples of ''film noir'' in the genre's classic era (from the early 1940s until the late 1950s). It was directed by Orson Welles, who appears as a corrupt U.S. police captain. The black-and-white film also features Charlton Heston as a Mexican police officer, Janet Leigh ("at her most perversely innocent" as one critic put it) as his bride, and Marlene Dietrich as a cigar-smoking gypsy brothel owner. The screenplay, loosely based on the novel ''Badge of Evil'' by Whit Masterson (a pseudonym for Robert Wade and William Miller), was written by Welles. Additional scenes were written by Paul Monash, and Franklin Coen.

Contents

Cast and crew

Synopsis

1998 re-release

Legacy

Quotations

From the film

About the film

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Cast and crew

★ Charlton Heston - Ramon Miguel Vargas

★ Janet Leigh - Susan Vargas

★ Orson Welles - Hank Quinlan

★ Joseph Calleia - Pete Menzies

★ Akim Tamiroff - Uncle Joe Grandi

★ Joanna Moore - Marcia Linnekar

★ Ray Collins - District Attorney Adair

★ Dennis Weaver - Motel Manager

★ Val de Vargas - Pancho

★ Mort Mills - Schwartz

★ Victor Millan - Manolo Sanchez

★ Lalo Rios - Risto

★ Phil Harvey - Blaine

★ Joi Lansing - Blonde

★ Harry Shannon - Gould

★ Rusty Wescoatt - Casey

★ Wayne Taylor - Gang Member

★ Kenny Miller - Gang Member

★ Raymond Rodriguez - Gang Member

★ Arlene McQuade - Ginnie

★ Zsa Zsa Gabor - Strip-club owner

★ Marlene Dietrich - Tanya

★ Mercedes McCambridge - Hoodlum

★ Keenan Wynn - Man

★ Joseph Cotten - Detective

Synopsis

Akim Tamiroff plays a border mobster with a wandering toupee, Dennis Weaver is a mentally unbalanced night clerk at an isolated motel, and Zsa Zsa Gabor appears briefly as the impresario of a strip club. Welles liked what Weaver did as Chester on TV's ''Gunsmoke'' and worked closely with him on his part, which was shot on a three-day hiatus from the TV show. Zsa Zsa Gabor was a friend of the producer.
Welles's old friend, Joseph Calleia, gives the performance of a lifetime as Quinlan's betrayed partner. He appears along with other members of the Welles repertory company, Joseph Cotten, Keenan Wynn, Ray Collins (the police detective on ''Perry Mason''), and Mercedes McCambridge as a biker chick. Many of the actors worked for lower wages just to make a film with Welles. Marlene Dietrich's role was a surprise to the producers and they raised her fee so they could advertise her involvement.
The score was by Henry Mancini. The scenes in the motel were given a frenzied tone by Mancini's highly artificial Mexican rock and roll instrumentals.
According to Heston, Welles was originally intended to act in the film only, and Heston was highly sought for the lead. Heston pretended to think that Welles was going to direct and based his acceptance of the part on that.
Welles rewrote the script, but after he completed the movie, it was re-edited (and in part re-shot) by Universal International pictures and it was not until 1998 (and the fourth version) that it was released in something like the original form intended by Welles. Nonetheless, even as originally released it was a film of power and impact, though little commercial success in the US, it was nonetheless quite popular in Europe. The producer was Albert Zugsmith, known as the "king of the B's".
The movie was literally a B-movie, released as the lower half of a double feature. The A-movie was ''The Female Animal'', starring Hedy Lamarr, produced by Albert Zugsmith and directed by Harry Keller whom the studio had hired to direct the re-shot material in ''Touch of Evil''. The two films even had the same cameraman: Russell Metty. Inevitably, Welles's film was given little publicity despite the fame of the director, the sensational subject matter, and the many stars in the cast.
Although the studios eventually let Welles write and direct the film, they refused to give him any more than his original acting salary. He personally rewrote the script, directed the film, enlisted friends to act in it, and played a leading role for no increase in pay. (He did however find some voice-over work for other productions while working at the studio) Welles agreed as he figured it was his only chance to get back into Hollywood.
Though Welles became morbidly obese later in his life, in the film the fat is mostly padding.

1998 re-release

So far, there have been four versions of the film:
#Welles' original cut submitted to Universal
#The original 1958 release version
#A 1975 version restoring much of Welles' footage at the expense of Keller's material
#A 1998 restored version that attempted to follow Welle's 1958 memo as closely as possible.
First was Welles' cut submitted to the studio. With Welles dropped from the project, Keller was brought in to shoot new scenes and remove many of Welles' scenes. Despite being severerly compromised, the film was well received in Europe, particulalry by critics like future film-maker Francois Truffaut.
Welle's 58-page memo to Universal became legendary over the years. By 1975, Welles was finally being recognized for his genius by the Hollywood mainstream. Universal put together a re-release that year that omitted much of Keller's material and restoring much of Welles' material. While a noble effort appreciated by many critics and Welles fans, it must be noted that Welles' memo showed he did not entirely dis-approve of all of Keller's material, and thus this version still did not entirely reflect the changes requested by Welles in his memo.
In 1998, the film was re-released in a re-edited form, which was based on the 58-page memo Orson Welles wrote immediately after his first and only viewing of the film, expressing his dissatisfaction with the producer's cut of the film. Since some of Welles's complaints were concerned with subtle sound and editing choices, it was possible for the film to be re-edited to produce a version that he might have been happy with. Notable changes include the removal of the credits and music from the 3-minute opening shot, crosscutting between the main story and Janet Leigh's subplot, the removal of some of Harry Keller's scenes and some other minor though substantive editorial tweaks. The 1998 director's cut was produced by Rick Schmidlin and edited by Walter Murch. It had a limited but successful theatrical release (again by Universal International) and was subsequently made available on DVD. The DVD includes a reproduction of the 58-page memo.
Originally scheduled to be premiered at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival with Janet Leigh, Walter Murch and Rick Schmidlin attending, the screening was cancelled in the eleventh-hour after threats of litigation from Welles' daughter Beatrice Welles,^[1] who has in the past issued similar threats against some parties who try to show or alter her father's work (such as the ''Touch of Evil'' restoration or the completion of Welles' last film ''The Other Side of the Wind''.) The reason given for the litigation was that Beatrice Welles was not consulted for the restoration, despite the restoration incorporating changes that Orson Welles had requested after he had the film taken out of his hands.

Legacy

The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's top 250 list, was #64 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Thrills, and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The film is also jokingly referred to (although not by name) in the Tim Burton film ''Ed Wood''. In a scene near the end of the film, Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) is complaining to Orson Welles about how producers always want the wrong actors to play certain parts in their movies. Welles says, "Tell me about it. I'm just about to start work on a movie where they want Charlton Heston to play a Mexican!"
A similar line is used in ''Get Shorty'', where movie fan Chili Palmer invites another character to see a screening of ''Touch of Evil'', saying, "We can see Charlton Heston play a Mexican." We later see Palmer watching the final scene of the movie, mouthing the words together with the characters on screen.
In James Robert Baker's novel, ''Boy Wonder'', fictional movie producer Shark Trager makes it his goal to surpass ''Touch of Evil's three minute opening tracking shot when filming a movie of his own. Tanya's line, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" was also quoted extensively in the book.
The opening shot is discussed briefly in the opening of Robert Altman's 1992 film, ''The Player'', by two characters who work for a fictional Hollywood studio. The shot in which the discussion takes place is itself a similar type of extended, uninterrupted tracking shot that spans the first three minutes of ''Touch of Evil''.
An interesting scene shows Susan Vargas under the influence of a mind-altering drug, having been dosed by the villains. The soundtrack here is slow, echoing electric blues music which, with the subject matter of the scene, seems to foreshadow the early psychedelic era in rock music.

Quotations

From the film

★ "I don't speak Mexican." (Quinlan)

★ "You're a mess, honey." (Tanya to Quinlan)

★ "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state." (Vargas)

★ "Come on, read my future for me."
"You haven't got any."
"What do you mean?"
"Your future is all used up." (Quinlan and Tanya)

★ "That's the second bullet I stopped for you, partner." (Quinlan to Menzies, after the final shootout)

★ "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" (Tanya, about Quinlan)

About the film

★ "''Touch of Evil'', of course, was made by one of the great directors. If it is not ''Citizen Kane'', it has been listed not far behind ''Kane'' in the list of Welles' films. It was a remarkable experience for me, a great learning experience, one of the most valuable I've had in my whole film career. I probably learned more about acting from Welles than any other film director I've worked for."—Charlton Heston

See also

★ List of films recut by studio

References

1. One of our classics is missing

Further reading

Nericcio, William Anthony. 'Hallucinations of Miscegenation and Murder: Dancing along the Mestiza/o Borders of Proto-Chicana/o Cinema with Orson Welles's Touch of Evil.'The first chapter of Tex(t)-Mex.

External links

★

★

★

★

★

★

★ Article/review on the 1998 release and Welles' involvement in civil rights as reflected in the film.

★ Welles' Memo to Universal

★ Tex(t)-Mex, a new book from the University of Texas Press, features an article on Orson Welles and Touch of Evil entitled: 'Hallucinations of Miscegenation and Murder: Dancing along the Mestiza/o Borders of Proto-Chicana/o Cinema with Orson Welles's Touch of Evil.'