Touch of Evil

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Touch of Evil
Original film poster
Directed by	Orson Welles
Produced by	Albert Zugsmith Rick Schmidlin (1998 restoration & director's cut)
Written by	Whit Masterson (novel, Badge of Evil) Orson Welles (screenplay) Paul Monash (uncredited) Franklin Coen (uncredited)
Starring	Orson Welles Charlton Heston Janet Leigh Marlene Dietrich
Music by	Henry Mancini
Cinematography	Russell Metty
Distributed by	Universal Studios October Films
Release date(s)	May 21, 1958
Running time	USA:95 min (1975 version:108 min.) (director's cut:112 min.) (Germany, 1998 version:111 min.) (Spain, DVD:106 min.)
Country	US
Language	English Spanish
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Touch of Evil (1958) is considered one of the last examples of film noir in the genre's classic era (from the early 1940s until the late 1950s). It was directed by Orson Welles, who appears as a corrupt U.S. police captain. The black-and-white film also features Charlton Heston as a Mexican police officer, Janet Leigh ("at her most perversely innocent" as one critic put it)^{[citation needed]} as his bride, and Marlene Dietrich as a cigar-smoking, gypsy, brothel owner. The screenplay, loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson (a pseudonym for Robert Wade and William Miller), was written by Welles. Additional scenes were written by Paul Monash, and Franklin Coen.

Contents 1 Cast and crew 1.1 Cast 2 1998 re-release 3 Legacy 4 Quotations 4.1 From the film 4.2 About the film 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Cast and crew

[edit] Cast

Akim Tamiroff plays a border mobster with a wandering toupee, Dennis Weaver is a loony night clerk at an isolated motel, and Zsa Zsa Gabor appears briefly as the impresario of a strip club. Welles liked what Weaver did as Chester on TV's Gunsmoke and worked closely with him on his part, which was shot on a three-day hiatus from the TV show. Zsa Zsa Gabor was a friend of the producer.

Welles's old friend, Joseph Calleia, gives the performance of a lifetime as Quinlan's betrayed partner. He appears along with other members of the Welles repertory company, Joseph Cotten, Keenan Wynn, Ray Collins (the police detective on Perry Mason), and Mercedes McCambridge as a biker chick. Many of the actors worked for lower wages just to make a film with Welles. Marlene Dietrich's role was a surprise to the producers and they raised her fee so they could advertise her involvement.

The score was by Henry Mancini. The scenes in the motel were given a frenzied tone by Mancini's highly artificial Mexican rock and roll instrumentals.

According to Heston, Welles was originally intended to act in the film only, and Heston was highly sought for the lead. Heston pretended to think that Welles was going to direct and based his acceptance of the part on that.

Welles rewrote the script, but after he completed the movie, it was re-edited (and in part re-shot) by Universal International pictures and it was not until 1998 (and the fourth version) that it was released in something like the original form intended by Welles. Nonetheless, even as originally released it was a film of power and impact, though little commercial success in the US, it was nonetheless quite popular in Europe. The producer was Albert Zugsmith, known as the "king of the B's".

The movie was literally a B-movie, released as the lower half of a double feature. The A-movie was The Female Animal, starring Hedy Lamarr, produced by Albert Zugsmith and directed by Harry Keller whom the studio had hired to direct the re-shot material in Touch of Evil. The two films even had the same cameraman: Russell Metty. Inevitably, Welles's film was given little publicity despite the fame of the director, the sensational subject matter, and the many stars in the cast.

Although the studios eventually gave in to letting Welles write and direct the film, they refused to give him any more than his original acting salary. He personally rewrote the script, directed the film, enlisted friends to act in it, and played a leading role for no increase in pay. (He did however find some voice-over work for other productions while working at the studio) Welles agreed as he figured it was his only chance to get back into Hollywood.

Welles appeared as grossly fat in the film and is shot from below to emphasize his corpulence, but in fact the fat is mostly padding. It was only later that Welles became genuinely obese.

[edit] 1998 re-release

In 1998, the film was re-released in a re-edited form, which was based on the 58-page memo Orson Welles wrote immediately after his first and only viewing of the film, expressing his dissatisfaction with the producer's cut of the film. Because Welles's complaints were concerned with subtle sound and editing choices, it was possible for the film to be re-edited to produce a version that he might have been happy with. Charlton Heston used his own influence plus Welles memo in order to guide the re-editing process. Notable changes include the removal of the credits and music from the 3-minute opening shot, quicker intercutting between the main story and Janet Leigh's subplot, the removal of Harry Keller's scenes and the addition of around 15 minutes of footage from a preview version found in the mid-70s.

The 1998 version was produced by Rick Schmidlin and edited by Walter Murch. It had a limited but successful theatrical release (again by Universal International) and was subsequently made available on DVD. The DVD includes a reproduction of the 58-page memo (the memo is also included as an appendix to This Is Orson Welles).

Originally scheduled to be premiered at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival with Janet Leigh, Walter Murch and Rick Schmidlin attending, the screening was cancelled in the eleventh-hour after threats of litigation from Welles' daughter Beatrice Welles^[1], who has in the past issued similar threats against some parties who try to show or alter (such as the Touch of Evil restoration or the completion of Welles' last film The Other Side of the Wind) her father's work. The reason given for the litigation was that Beatrice Welles was not consulted for the restoration, despite the restoration incorporating changes that Orson Welles had requested after he had the film taken out of his hands.

[edit] Legacy

The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's top 250 list, was #64 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Thrills, and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The film is also jokingly referred to (although not by name) in the Tim Burton film Ed Wood. In a scene near the end of the film, Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) is complaining to Orson Welles about how producers always want the wrong actors to play certain parts in their movies. Welles says, "Tell me about it. I'm just about to start work on a movie where they want Charlton Heston to play a Mexican!"

A similar line is used in Get Shorty, where movie fan Chili Palmer invites another character to see a screening of Touch of Evil, saying, "We can see Charlton Heston play a Mexican." We later see Palmer watching the final scene of the movie, mouthing the words together with the characters on screen.

In James Robert Baker's novel, Boy Wonder, fictional movie producer Shark Trager makes it his goal to surpass Touch of Evil's three minute opening tracking shot when filming a movie of his own. Tanya's line, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" was also quoted extensively in the book.

The opening shot is discussed briefly in the opening of Robert Altman's 1992 film, The Player, by two characters who work for a fictional Hollywood studio. The shot in which the discussion takes place is itself a similar type of extended, uninterrupted tracking shot that spans the first eight minutes of Touch of Evil.

An interesting scene shows Susan Vargas under the influence of a mind-altering drug, having been dosed by the villains. The soundtrack here is slow, echoing electric blues music which, with the subject matter of the scene, seems to foreshadow the early psychedelic era in rock music.

[edit] Quotations

[edit] From the film

• "Honey, you're a mess." (Tana to Quinlan)
• "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state." (Vargas)
• "Come on, read my future for me."
  "You haven't got any."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Your future is all used up." (Quinlan and Tana)
• "That's the second bullet I stopped for you, partner." (Quinlan to Menzies, after the final shootout)
• "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" (Tana, about Quinlan)

[edit] About the film

• "Touch of Evil, of course, was made by one of the great directors. If it is not Citizen Kane, it has been listed not far behind Kane in the list of Welles' films. It was a remarkable experience for me, a great learning experience, one of the most valuable I've had in my whole film career. I probably learned more about acting from Welles than any other film director I've worked for."—Charlton Heston

[edit] See also

• List of films recut by studio

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Touch of Evil at the Internet Movie Database
• Touch of Evil at All Movie Guide
• Touch of Evil at Rotten Tomatoes
• Touch of Evil at Yahoo! Movies
• Touch of Evil at Filmsite.org
• Touch of Evil at the TCM Movie Database
• {{Article/review on the 1998 release and Welles' involvement in civil rights as reflected in the film.
• Welles' Memo to Universal
• Tex(t)-Mex, a new book from the University of Texas Press, features an article on Orson Welles and Touch of Evil entitled: 'Hallucinations of Miscegenation and Murder: Dancing along the Mestiza/o Borders of Proto-Chicana/o Cinema with Orson Welles's Touch of Evil.'

Orson Welles
Citizen Kane (1941) • The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) • The Stranger (1946) • The Lady from Shanghai (1947) • Macbeth (1948) • Othello (1952) • Mr. Arkadin (1955) • Touch of Evil (1958) • The Trial (1962) • Chimes at Midnight (1965) • The Immortal Story (1968) • F for Fake (1974)