Touch of Evil
“Tell me about it. I’m supposed to do a thriller for Universal. They want Charlton Heston as a Mexican.” -Orson Welles, “Ed Wood”
Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil” is one of the greatest film noirs of all-time, although at the time of its release it came to mark the end of Welles’s Hollywood career: the boy wonder who created a sensation with his debut film “Citizen Kane” had long lost his freedom from studio interference, and “Touch of Evil”- which would be re-edited and partially re-shot after he presented his first cut to Universal- was the nail in the coffin of his prospects in Tinsletown. The last 27 years of his life would be spent on projects that he had trouble financing, and in many cases, would never finish.
But time has been kind to Welles, and in 1998 (thirteen years after his death) he was afforded the opportunity to have “Touch of Evil” presented as closely to his vision as audiences had seen. Using a 58-page memo Welles wrote as his guide, master editor and sound designer Walter Murch restored the film to represent “Evil” as Welles wanted to release it. Of course, having seen the film previously in its studio-sanctioned version, the changes were predominantly subtle, and made a clearly great film even greater.
“You know, Welles didn’t even want to do this movie. He had a contract with Universal he couldn’t get out of. But, you know, sometimes you do your best work with a gun to your head.” -Chili Palmer, “Get Shorty”
Starting with one of the greatest tracking shots in film history (in which we see dynamite planted in a car that will cross paths with Heston’s Mike Vargas and Janet Leigh’s Susan Vargas as they cross the border before it explodes), Welles’s “adaptation” of Whit Masterson’s Badge of Evil, which the writer-director supposedly never read, is one of the great masterpieces of visual style and sound design. Even until his latest films in the ’70s, Welles experimented with and challenged artistic conventions throughout much of his career, and “Touch of Evil” is my favorite of his experiments. And the restored version Murch put together brought much of those experiments back into the film, namely the cross-cutting between storylines as Vargas and Welles’s Hank Quinlan track down who was responsible for the car exploding and Susan’s harassment at the hands of a local gang run by a man Vargas just put in jail and the use of Henry Mancini’s score as not just conventional film music but also as “source music” coming from radios and bars, and even a player piano at the home of a local fortune teller (Zsa Zsa Gabor) with a history with Quinlan.
Watching the film again, however, the film’s racial tensions and the lax immigration laws between the US-Mexican border come through deeper than before, no doubt because of the way immigration reform has become a hot-button issue in the past few years. This particular border town is an ideal setting for a film that gets down to the heart of noir, with corrupt cops; ethic quandaries; complicated legal wranglings; damsels in distress (the scenes with Susan being harassed at a hotel run by the local gangs are unnerving even before the danger level reaches critical mass); and a cop trying to sort out the truth. Vargas being Mexican is a key to the film’s success, and having an actor of Heston’s integrity and power is essential to making the role work, even if he looks nothing like a Mexican. Welles may have been unsure about the idea at the time, but he made the casting work beautifully. He and Heston play off each other masterfully as the two cops, both of the highest esteem in their respective countries, try and solve the case in their own ways.
As Quinlan, Welles had never been better or more sympathetic; Quinlan may be corrupt to the core, but it’s only because he’s trying to make up for the death of his wife many years ago. As he’ll tell his longtime partner Menzies (Joseph Calleia), “That was the last killer that ever got out of my hands.” That relationship between Quinlan and Menzies is one of the most touching (and tragic) in film history, leading to the climax where Menzies must decide between his loyalty to his partner and the truth. The final scene is one of the best in film history, as Menzies wears a wire and tries to get Quinlan to confess as Vargas is underneath the pier listening in. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his Great Movies review of the film, it makes no sense logically but that doesn’t lessen the tension. It’s one final display of showmanship (brilliantly shot by Russell Metty, who captures the film’s B-movie qualities effortlessly) from the master storyteller before he was banished from the Hollywood stage he tried to make his own. Thankfully, Welles would have the last laugh courtesy of people whose lives were inspired by his art, and the studio that would drive him out of town. In that way, both filmmaker and the character he played were not so different when all is said and done.
