Touch of Evil (1958)

User Rating:

8.4/10   

Director:

Orson Welles

Writers:

Orson Welles (screenplay)
Whit Masterson (novel)

Release Date:

8 June 1958 (France)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Thriller

Tagline:

The Overwhelming Drama of a Strange Vengeance

Plot:

Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town.

Plot Keywords:

Mexican | Border | Evidence | Investigation | Law

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Charlton Heston	...	Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas
Janet Leigh	...	Susan 'Susie' Vargas
Orson Welles	...	Police Captain Hank Quinlan
Joseph Calleia	...	Police Sergeant Pete Menzies
Akim Tamiroff	...	'Uncle' Joe Grandi
Joanna Moore	...	Marcia Linnekar
Ray Collins	...	District Attorney Adair
Dennis Weaver	...	Mirador Motel Night Manager
Valentin de Vargas	...	Pancho - Grandi Hood
Mort Mills	...	Al Schwartz - District Attorney's Assistant
Victor Millan	...	Manelo Sanchez
Lalo Rios	...	Risto - Grandi's Nephew
Michael Sargent	...	Pretty Boy
Phil Harvey	...	Blaine
Joi Lansing	...	Zita

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some violence and drug content. (1988 restoration)

Runtime:

95 min | Germany:111 min (1998 alternate version) | USA:108 min (1975 alternate vesion) | USA:112 min (director's cut) | Spain:106 min (DVD edition)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Germany:16 (restored version) (re-rating: 2005) | Netherlands:6 | South Korea:15 (2003) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Finland:K-11 (DVD rating) | Finland:K-12 (restored version) | Finland:K-16 (original rating) | Germany:18 (restored version) | Norway:15 (re-rating) (1999) | Norway:16 (1985) | Spain:13 (DVD rating) | Sweden:11 (restored version) | Sweden:15 (original rating) | UK:12 | USA:Approved (PCA #18506) (original rating) | USA:PG-13 (No. 36039) (re-rating) (1998 restoration) | USA:Unrated (restored version) | West Germany:16 (nf)

Filming Locations:

Venice, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

The film takes place in a fictional Mexican border town, Los Robles, but was filmed in Venice, California because the place looked convincingly run-down and decayed.

Goofs:

Continuity: The degree of beard stubble on Quinlan's face changes from sequence to sequence within the same night.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Border Cop: Uh, you folks American citizens?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Free Enterprise (1998)

Soundtrack:

Tana's Theme

Hellish, haunting, human...

There are several candidates for Welles greatest masterpiece - on odd days, this is mine; on even days I might choose The Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, Othello...

Welles took on this shlock noir potboiler adapted from Badge of Evil as a challenge, to prove that he could make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. His genius (so often frittered away in later years) is evident in every frame from the famous, dizzying virtuosity of the opening shot - the long tracking over crowds and streets to the no-man's-land of the Mexican border which seems to encompass all human life before exploding into the plot itself.

Welles own adaptation ditches Whit Masterson's simplistic good cop/bad cop dichotomy in favour of a swampland of moral relativism. His cop, Hank Quinlan (surely the template for M Emmet Walsh's character in Blood Simple) is gargantuan in his monstrosity, but Charlton Heston's Mike Vargas, for all his simpering goodness, is shallow, cold and deeply unlikeable and Janet Leigh is a cipher. Only Marlene Dietrich's whore-with-a-heart provides a tiny ember of compassion ("He was some kind of man, What does it matter what you say about people?").

Using the moral grey area of a border town, Welles' delves into the seamiest parts of life where everyone's future is "all used up". The pitch and tenor of the movie is really that of Shakespearean tragedy - Quinlan's tragedy - and the bleak humanity of the film is mesmerising. Even so - and even in the newly restored version which is as close to Welles intentions as we will ever get - one can't help feeling that Welles is trying to cram greatness into a plot that is too slight, too laboured.

For all its flaws (and it is a movie about human frailty) this is two hours of exquisite filmmaking, a masterpiece in a world that has cheapened the word