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A Touch of Welles
The "greatest of all sleaze movies" is recognized a national treasure.
The last couple of years have been pretty good for Orson Welles, even though he hasn't been around to enjoy them. Following the discovery of Othello, 1993 brought bits and pieces of his unfinished South American film It's All True. As the year ended, the Library of Congress National Film Registry selected Touch of Evil as one of 25 films that deserve to be protected and preserved. The films selected are considered to be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Touch of Evil was the last film Welles directed in Hollywood. Critics have called it a baroque thriller, the greatest masterpiece of all sleaze movies, and an exceptional film noir portrait of corruption. That's damning it with faint praise.
Released in 1958, it was never a commercial success, despite the casting of Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh at a time when they were near the peak of their popularity.
When the film performed poorly it was trimmed from 108 to 91 minutes and released as the bottom half of double bills. Although there were gaps in continuity, and the hacked-up version never made much sense, it was shown for years on TV, at revivals, and in early video editions. In the process it acquired a cult following.
Fortunately, Welles's original 108 minute version was found in 1976 and is now available in what MCA Home Video calls the complete uncut restored version.
Set in a seedy Mexican border town, the story involves a murder investigation which pits Heston, as an honest narcotics cop, against a corrupt sheriff played by Welles. As the plot unfolds, Welles frames a Mexican youth.
Heston's bride, Janet Leigh, is kidnapped, terrorized, drugged, framed for another murder, and possibly gang-raped.
In anyone else's hands this would have been a forgettable B movie. With Welles's direction and Russell Metty's moody black and white photography it became a visually striking stylistic film. Using unusual lighting and unique camera angles, they created a creepy atmosphere of corruption, foreboding, and suspense. The opening sequence, which starts with a close-up of an explosives detonator, pans through a dark parking lot, up richly textured walls, and ends with a car explosion, is justifiably considered a classic.
As Hank Quinlan, Welles turned in one of the great performances of his career. Fat, sloppy, cynical, cold, corrupt and world-weary, Quinlan is the essence of evil as he controls his world by bullying, intimidating, lying, and if necessary murdering.
He coached fine performances from Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, and Akim Tamirof A nervously creepy turn by Dennis Weaver is undoubtedly the best work of his career. Heston, sporting black hair and a moustache, is competent, if somewhat hard to accept as a Mexican narc. Henry Mancini contributed a solid bluesy Latin rock score. Joseph Cotten and Mercedes McCambridge show up briefly in unbilled cameos.
Also not to be missed is the Castle
Hill Productions, Inc. video release of Welles's film of Shakespeare's Othello. Subtitled The Lost Masterpiece, it contains an enlightening prologue by Welles's daughter, Rebecca.
Although it won best picture award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952, Othello was shelved for several years, before being shown in a New Jersey vault and restored. Most of the restoration involved remixing dialogue, rerecording the soundtrack by the Chicago symphony and Chicago Opera Company, and synchronizing the audio with visuals.
Othello is a classic plot of deceit and revenge in which Iago vows to avenge Roderigo, whom Othello has promoted to Lieutenant over him. Swearing that "a net shall enmesh them all," his oath is the first in a bloody chain of events that brings downfalls and doom to many.
To finance Othello, Welles acted in The Third Man, Prince of Foxes and other films. Because he kept running out of money, the project took several years to complete, and Welles frequently had to innovate to solve production problems. Scenes were started in Morocco and finished a year later in Venice. The sequence where Iago orchestrates an attempt to murder Cassio was planned as a street scene. When the costumes failed to arrive, and his actors were scheduled to leave for other assignments, Welles solved the problem by wrapping the cast in sheets and towels borrowed from local hotels. He shot the scene in a bathhouse, which was really a fish market.
As his daughter says, the result is not Shakespeare in the traditional sense. It is Wellesian, which among other things, means it's very inventive and visual. As in
Touch of Evil and his other films, there are plenty of unusual camera angles, quick cuts, striking silhouettes and an emphasis on texture.
The film has been called everything from "one of
the screen's sublime achievements," to "a great galloping
masterpiece." It has also been said that it "shows more
artistry in a single frame than most movies show in two hours."
That was true of a lot of Orson Welles's work. MM
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This story was published in the February 1994 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
A Touch of Welles / The "greatest of all sleaze movies" is recognized a national treasure.
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