Touch of Evil

the key thing about Touch Of Evil is that it is essentially an early Russ Meyer film, only made by Orson Welles.

it doesnt interest me.

im just going to have to accept the film for what it is.

But they still refused to have Agnes Moorehead in the role given to Edward G., and they cut 20-odd minutes from the beginning (the old non-advancement of plot thing).

I wax and wane on Touch of Evil. It's my favourite film some days. Heston is bone-achingly straight and earnest, but this kind of emphasises the texture of Welles -- he IS the bad guy, but he's also the character we need to feel something for (love/hate) (apart from Joseph Calleia's tragic character, anyway). Heston needs to be a dummy, a symbol, and he does that just fine. CH may not have seen it that way, but OW did.

The drugs stuff is a bit silly, but this is the 1950s. Some people would've been shocked back then. Films are an artefact of their time, like it or not. Brando's tough biker seems more camp than rugged these days. (That opinion comes from my mother, BTW, and she lived through the period.)

OW's own fave was Chimes at Midnight, probably followed by The Trial. On an off day, I'll sit on the fence.

with Evil, somehow i feel that welles was just trying a campy remake of the third man which i think has similar themes but does it much better overall. hm.touch of evil is slowly growing on me as ive rerun it over in my mind these last couple months. maybeill go ahead and give it another go soon.

Welles wrote that textbook.

maybe thats why i like godard

so there!

The first time I saw ToE, I didn't even notice the length/complexity of that opening tracking shot. By his own criteria (which I think I more or less agree with), that was the desired response.

That battle scene is fabulous. Ineffable's a good word: what does it have that a massive budget and rampant, stunning use of CGI somehow can't generate? It's just two dozen guys running around a field in cheap costumes, but...

which do you find more interesting chrissie? other than the two i mentioned i havent seen. hah. i hold kane higher than all the others ive seen except maybe the trial.

i just watched the rules of the game by the way (ive seen grand illusion) and ive defintiely begun connecting dots with his and welles's work. after i watched it over for the 3rd time and specifially looked for where cuts were i was amazed at the seamlessness, simpleness, and beauty of his long takes. what renoir should i see next?

Chimes isn't available in America (or the UK) in stores. It's been beset with legal problems. It may appear eventually -- there is scary talk of a 'restoration' a la Othello* -- but the Spanish disc is the best bet at the moment.

(*If anyone can do me a DVD dub of the untampered Othello from the OOP Criterion laserdisc, please drop me a line. I find the restoration... distasteful.)

Which do I find more interesting? Yeah, The Trial! And Chimes, Touch of Evil, Othello, Lady from Shanghai... but not Mr. Arkadin, which suffers too badly from bad editing away from Welles' hands (though Michael Redgrave's 'gay' performance is endlessly amusing).

Have you seen Immortal Story? That might be his least interesting effort, bar The Stranger. Very static and subdued, which is perhaps fitting to the source material (a Karen Blixen short story), but it doesn't seem to amount to much -- might as well just read the story, for all that OW brings to it. Which is odd, as he said he'd never do a Crime and Punishment picture specifically because he'd be unable to 'give' it anything...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2289&item=6303152223&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2296&item=6303819413&rd=1

The first one is cheaper, but both are resonable.

(These links are apt to become redundant very quickly, natch...)

I haven't seen any of the television stuff, to be honest. Immortal Story qualifies, I guess -- although it had a theatrical release, it was made ostensibly for television. I'm particularly interested in seeing the early '50s King Lear, though I've read the print quality is atrocious. (It's lucky to have survived at all, though.)

You can order it in the US on a DVD with The Stranger here:

http://www.ccvideo.com/item.cfm?itemid=CCD001034

Quite cheap. If you bite, you'll have to let me know if it's worth my effort to get it. :)

previously unpublished Heston interview on making ToE:

http://www.seanax.com/?p=189

Ah, the glory days of ILF.

This is possibly my favorite movie ever made.

Exaggerating slightly but not by much.

(first time I saw it I was mad ^^^ and had this theory that Welles casting All-American Man Heston as a Mexican was a coded commentary on the social construction of race)

they need to redo the "director's cut" version in the right aspect ratio.

TOUCH OF EVIL MORE LIKE TOUCH OF SHIT AMIRITE

j/k this movie rules

OK, what are the arguments on the "right" aspect ratio? (and we don't really HAVE a "director's cut" of ToE)

New 50th anniv DVD (1.85:1) just out, w/ commetary by James Naremore & Jonathan Rosenbaum.

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006808.html

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-master-touch-20081009

This strain of camp grotesquerie encroaches on myriad aspects of the picture, certainly on Welles's larger-than-life performance as Quinlan and in the glaring presence of Marlene Dietrich as a Mexican fortune-teller. Take a look at the blind woman who sits impassively frame right as Vargas apologetically telephones his new wife. Universal cropped her out of the frame, but she was reinstated after Welles argued his case in the famous 58-page memo of December 1957, when he fought to minimize the damage wrought by the studio's editors (see Chronology, below). "It was meant to be peculiar," he insisted. The effect is deeply self-aware and quintessentially Wellesian in its cockeyed excess. His next picture, after all, turned out to be Kafka's The Trial, which he insisted was a comedy even if no one else was laughing.

I dislike the "director's cut" released in 1998; and if it's a piece of camp grotesqueness we're dealing with, then I want Mancini music.

As for Dietrich, she was right: it's her best performance.

just saw this last night; totally righteous. seems rather dark and grotesque for the time period (not necessarily in a basic "oh that guy is creepy" kind of way, this weirdness just permeates the whole film)

tons of incredible shots of course; how the actors are locationally positioned in the scenes really strengthens the dialogue.

david lynch has got to love this movie but maybe that's a shallow assessment

Not shallow at all, I can certainly see that. As for dark and grotesque, I think a lot of people couldn't handle it at the time, and I'm sure there was at least one totally outraged review from the original release.

This is more of a "shallow masterpiece" than Citizen Kane, and this isn't a bad thing.

http://i.imgur.com/6twMBVY.jpg?1

this film is fairly humdrum for the first hour or so and then utterly fucking spectacular for the last twenty minutes. better that than the inverse

humdrum?!

Isn't the opening sequence part of the first hour or so?

by welles' 'lofty standards'. charlton heston's fault mostly. opening sequence is great but then it's all brooding menace and then the epic payoff

oh damn, brooding menace and an epic payoff, what a terrible disappointment

no beef, just a structural observation

RIP menacing hood Pancho

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/touch-of-evil-valentin-de-vargas-dies-orson-welles-606471

...so is Zsa Zsa Gabor the last living cast member?

i remember seeing the restored version in theaters back in 98, and there were a couple of gay dudes in the row behind me laughing really hard at the scene where janet leigh was lying in bed wearing this:

http://i.imgur.com/bSttecy.jpg

i guess thats when i learned what camp is

Rewatched on DCP in a theater last night. Dennis Weaver's lunatic "night man" is really a marvel, and his interactions with the hoodlums at the motel have a big proto-Lynch vibe.

Always forget that Heston's primary cop ally (Schwartz) is played by Mort Mills, who was the cop with the dark shades in Psycho.

Agree about Dennis Weaver, never knew this latter bit of info.

had this theory that Welles casting All-American Man Heston as a Mexican was a coded commentary on the social construction of race

by now i hope HOOS knows that Welles didn't cast Heston (it's closer to the reverse).

Watched this for the first time today and had a ball. Some things:

- Obviously, the opening scene is just spectacular. I found myself thinking 'Renoir!' in quite a few places.
- Welles has something of Renoir about him - particularly Renoir-as-Octave?
- The Janet Leigh character does consistently confusing things but she eats up the screen when she's on it. She should definitely stay away from motels.
- Heston is kinda bad to be honest. Acting like he's being pulled along by his teeth. And the blackface is just, jeez (the entire portrayal of Mexicans is quietly astonishing).
- That final scene in the graveyard of industry absolutely made me think it was a deliberate reference to the wheel in The Third Man.
- Honestly had no idea it was Dietrich! She was the best thing in it?

Loved this: "I could work forever on the editing of a film. For me, the strip of celluloid is put together like a musical score, and this execution is determined by the editing; just like a conductor interprets a piece of music in rubato, another will play it in a very dry and academic manner and a third will be very romantic, and so on. The images themselves are not sufficient: they are very important, but are only images. The essential is the length of each image, what follows each image: it is the very eloquence of the cinema that is constructed in the editing room."

Is there a particular Welles/Welles-adjacent book I could or should go to?

I didn't cope too well with the Dennis Weaver character. It was like he'd been dropped in from a different film? He definitely added to the overall sense of fear and nightmarishness I guess. Similarly with 'jittery guy' who must have been told to 'bob up and down', and again 'keep bobbing!'.

Is there a particular Welles/Welles-adjacent book I could or should go to?

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski),

For sure his booklength interview with Bogdanovich -- such a literate man, our Orson.

I read Clifton Heylin's critical bio last month. The last two volumes of Simon Callow's bio also terrific for insights.

Nice one, cheers. My university library has the Bogdanovich. Got myself a copy of the Renoir autobiography as well - cheap hardback.

Renoir's memoir of his old man also worth a read.

how is thomson? I picked it up for cheap a while ago but haven’t really opened it yet

Rewatched on DCP in a theater last night. Dennis Weaver's lunatic "night man" is really a marvel, and his interactions with the hoodlums at the motel have a big proto-Lynch vibe.

Always forget that Heston's primary cop ally (Schwartz) is played by Mort Mills, who was the cop with the dark shades in Psycho.

― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 22 April 2018 16:39 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

rewatching on TV right now and the first appearance of the "night man" actually took my mind straight to norman bates so i'm enjoying morbs's two sentences here^^^, miss you dude

i looked up mercedes mccambridge and discovered that when she played opposite joan crawford in johnny guitar, she ended up calling her a "mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten-egg lady"

!!!

re the Psycho cop

Definitely reminiscent of Psycho. I sat down to watch the film on TV too but unfortunately, because of the snow I assume, the satellite signalling started breaking up about halfway through and has now conked out entirely!

mine was bit flickery yes, but made it to the end

corrupt cop who gets results toppled by jittery know-it-all wife guy

Just rewatched last night. So great. "I'm the night manager!"

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMmE1NDc2ZTgtODIwYy00OTViLTg0MjUtNmFhY2QzMmRkYjhlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI4Nzk0NjY@._V1_.jpg

Weird, I actually watched it on Friday night, on a whim. Had never seen it before. What a picture!

"I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on."