A Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil was written and directed by Orson Welles, and the film stars Orson Welles as "Hank Quinlan," Janet Leigh as "Susie Vargas," and Charleton Heston as Miguel "Mike" Vargas. Along with them, Marlene Dietrich and other well known actors of the time play supporting roles.

This two-DVD set is a feast for film aficianodos. It includes the theatrical release of 1958, a "preview" version, discovered in 1976, and a 1998 "restored," actually re-edited, version, which was made to conform to a memo Orson Welles wrote after he had submitted a rough cut and then saw, with disappointment, the studio's re-cut, which included new footage added by contract director Harry Keller. A facsimile of Welles' typewritten memo is included in the box. Welles had fallen out with the studio's executives by leaving the country before the film was finished. Welles never directed another U.S. film.

In his memo, Welles expressed, among other things, two concerns about the film's opening. First was his concern about the long tracking shot at the beginning of the film. He was shown that shot superimposed with the film's credits and accompanied by Henry Mancini's score. The "restored" version removes the credits from the opening and replaces the opening's music with "sourced" sounds, that is, sounds that might be heard along the streets of a typical town on the U.S. and Mexican border. That town was the imaginary Los Robles, which was actually Venice, California. Welles' original vision of the opening shot was available for the "restoration," because the studio had preserved it in order to present international editions of the film with credits in languages other than English. Another great concern of Welles was the removal of the inter-cuts between the scene of the explosion, at the end of the opening shot, and Susie's encounter with Grandi; Welles thought the inter-cuts were necessary to the plot, but the studio thought that the audience might become confused by them. The inter-cuts make clear that essential elements of the plot occur simultaneously, in different places. Parts of the action occur on the U.S. side of the border; equally important things occur on the Mexican side.

The film does have a plot: Someone places a bomb in a car; the car explodes at the end of the film's opening; a lot of police descend on the scene of the crime; a long search for the perpetrator ensues. During the course of the investigation, several more tensions become apparent: Vargas is Mexico's top cop, and Grandi is a Mexican mobster; Vargas is Mexican, just married to an American, and Quinlan is an American who may have strangled his own wife; Quinlan is a corrupt, celebrity cop, and Vargas is a good, doing-his-duty cop; and then there are the differences between the cultures of Mexico and the U.S. The "restored," re-edited, version was made to make the plot more coherent, to tie-up the many loose ends left by the theatrical release. But the journey may be more interesting than the destination; this film can be enjoyed without comprehending the plot in its entirety.

I enjoyed the cinemaphotography. It's black-and-white, and much of the film is shot at night; it should be expected to be dark and contrasty, as it is, yet a lot of detail is retained. Aside from the justifiably famous, opening tracking shot, there is a scene of a moving car filmed without a process shot -- a first! -- with the camera attached to the front of a car as it's driven by Vargas down a long Venice, California alley. The film's cars were supplied by Chrysler, some of them are convertibles (1957?), whose design was influenced by Virgil Exner and marked the height of Chrysler's use of tailfins, before the 1959 Cadillac appeared.

There is a wealth of "bonus" material on the two disks. Each version of the film can be seen with voiceover commentary: writer F.X. Feeney, on the theatrical version; Welles historians Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore, on the preview version; and, on the "restored" version, the restoration's producer, Rick Schmidlin talks about the film. An additional voiceover commentary on the "restored" version -- although the box' back cover indicates that it's with the preview version -- with Schmidlin and two of the film's stars, Charleton Heston and Janet Leigh, can also be heard. In addition to the voiceover commentaries, Bringing Evil to Life has interviews with Heston, Leigh, members of the film crew and film historians, and Evil Lost and Found has a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the restored version.

One of the voiceovers mentions that Alfred Hitchcock became enamored of this film. His Psycho of 1960 also starred Janet Leigh, who had a bad time in an out-of-the-way motel, just as she did in this film. In Touch of Evil, the motel clerk was played by Dennis Weaver, whose eccentricity was portrayed differently than Norman Bates' eccentricity in Psycho.

Russel Metty was responsible for the film's cinemaphotography. He won an Academy Award for 1960's Spartacus, another film that starred Charleton Heston.

These disks were seen, upscaled via a Sony S570 Blue-ray player to a 1080p hi-def TV, and the transfers were done very well. Harry Quinlan's seediness is quite apparent; a Blue-ray edition might show off his whiskers a little better and reveal more of the costumes' details and textures, but these DVDs provide an adequate impression of those things.

Some have complained that this set is inappropriately letter-boxed. It was filmed in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, but the director's intent was that it be shown in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, so this set's presentation is correct. People who saw a theatrical release or the VHS release in 1.37:1 saw more than was intended. In a theatre, the projectionist should have set the projector's aperture plate to display 1.85:1 frames; the VHS transfer's aspect ratio may have been a concession to television's 4:3 aspect ratio at the time of the VHS release.


The film's Wikipedia entry is here.

Walter Murch's article, "Restoring The Touch of Genius to a Classic," which appeared in The NY Times, is here. Walter Murch was engaged by restoration producer Schmidlin to re-edit the film.

And, again, Welles' memo, with editorial matter by Lawrence French, can be read here.

This post's image was found at Amazon.com, here.