09 · 07 · 21

TOUCH OF EVIL: the re-release of a classic

Rafael Aviña

In just three minutes, Touch of Evil (1958), not only shows Orson Welles' technical expertise, but also his pessimistic vision of society, starting with his first masterpiece that marked his debut in the industry: Citizen Kane (1941). In fact, that incredible long take that begins with the placement of a bomb in the trunk of a Packard automobile, the start-up of the car driven by a construction businessman, its journey through a town in the U.S.-Mexico border area (apparently Tijuana), the appearance of the protagonist couple (a Mexican narcotics officer and his brand-new American wife) and the explosion of the vehicle, just as they cross the border on the U.S. side. This scene works as a tribute to the most intense and perverse Hitchcock, and shows the talent of a man always ahead of his time as Welles was.

In 1998, four decades after it was filmed, Orson Welles (1915-1985) was resurrected to guide a new montage of a vibrant noir thriller that transcends the typical B-series suspense story to become a disturbing study of corruption and the vision of evil personified in the figure of a ruthless and repulsive police chief, Captain Hank Quinlan —“A great detective but a lousy cop”— played by the director himself. Indeed, this is a key work of twilight film noir with a complex maze-like plot, which allows Welles to carry out all his visual imagery and embody another of his most memorable characters along with Charles Foster Kane and Mr. Arkadin.

As happened with his entire filmography, always misunderstood and mutilated by industry magnates, Touch of Evil was edited without Welles' consent, who preferred to go to Mexico to prepare the shooting of another unfinished work: Don Quixote. Some additional scenes were added by the director's assistant, Harry Keller, and 13 minutes were inserted to the original footage of 95 minutes. By 1997, Jonathan Rosenbaum, a film historian and student of Welles, located a 58-page memo from Welles that had been sent to Universal Pictures and in which he detailed the prudent changes needed to return the film to its original spirit.

Thus, with the help of the brilliant editor and sound engineer Walter Murch (The Conversation, The Godfather II and III, Apocalypse Now, Romeo is Bleeding), Rosembaun managed to carry out the final project in which important changes can be appreciated, such as in the opening long take, in which the credits disappear and a good part of the great percussion-laden theme song composed by Henry Mancini, while the ambient sound of a car radio was added. Other modifications have to do with the character played by Joseph Calleia, Sergeant Menzies, Quinlan's accomplice, who is vindicated.

The delirious police investigation that brings together a Mexican anti-drug officer, Mike Vargas (an effective Charlton Heston), his wife Susan (Janet Leigh), kidnapped by a gang of Mexican youths by order of the repulsive Uncle Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), whose brother is imprisoned in Mexico for drug trafficking, and the plan to discredit Vargas, conceived by the amoral Inspector Quinlan, a veteran detective who uses bribery and blackmail among his official methods and shows his darker side; all of this follows the guidelines of the most thrilling film noir, which tends to crime, rottenness and brutality.

Here, the vision that permeates Mexico is based on the law that governs the border areas: illegality, easy money and drugs. And there is no lack of racist comments by Quinlan, even by Vargas' own wife, the future female star of Psycho (1960), who contemptuously calls “Pancho” (Valentin de Vargas) to the leader of the rebellious youths who bust out with rock-jazz, alcohol and marijuana at the El Mirador Motel (Palmdale, Calif.), the place where she is violently kidnapped, in an exceptional and paranoid sequence featuring the shocking motel employee played by Dennis Weaver, famous as Chester in the TV series Gunsmoke (1955-64) and soon to be the star of the McCloud series (1970-77) and Steven Spielberg's debut film: Duel (1971).

In fact, the hero is the Mexican Vargas who notes: “All border towns bring out the worst in a country”, whose methods also include desperate violence when his wife disappears and techniques that are commonplace today and at the time little seen. We refer to the remote recording that Vargas executes, when Menzies, who wears a hidden microphone, tries to make Quinlan confess, in another splendid long take that happens on the shore of a beach and under a bridge, where Menzies redeems himself and Quinlan has his own terrible end, before the gaze of the gypsy Tanya played by the mythical Marlene Dietrich, in this adaptation of the novel Badge of Evil, by Whit Masterson (pseudonym of the writers Robert Wide and Bill Miller).

A stifling chiaroscuro lighting that highlights the bleakness of the environment as an allegory of Quinlan's fatal determinations such as the murder of Grandi, claustrophobic settings and sinister visual effects with Heston as the noir antihero. Touch of Evil, filmed in the streets of Venice and Universal Studios in California to give the idea of Tijuana, and a spectacular image work by Russell Metty, who follows the characters in long takes and intricate crane shots, is a fascinating dissertation on moral ambiguity and the corruption of institutions, ahead of that dark jewel of Abel Ferrara: Bad Lieutenant (1992).

Translated by Adrik Díaz