330. Touch of Evil (1958)

Directed By Orson Welles

Synopsis

A Mexican cop and an American cop clash while investigating a murder. Corruption, hatred and grotesquery pepper the rest of the film.

Review

Orson Welles can be one of the most rewarding film-makers and actors to simply watch. Here he plays a completely monstrous character with such a sheer screen magnetism that you are glued to what is a very strange and brutal film to the very amazing end.

Again as I discussed in the last review the sense of cinema becoming more adult is patent here, not that Orson ever made uncomplicated films, but the themes dealt with, and the way they were dealt with was always quite tame.

This film is the death toll of the film noir, and what an amazing one it is. The whole thing is great to watch from one of the most stressful opening scenes ever, to blacked up Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich to bulging eyed Mexican drug baron strangled over the face of Janet Leigh to the edge-of-seat ending, it all works perfectly and disconcertingly. I am sure David Lynch liked this one, I did.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

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. Welles's film was given little publicity despite the many stars in the cast. Nonetheless, even as originally released it was a film of power and impact: though it had little commercial success in the US, it was nonetheless quite well-received in Europe, particularly by critics like future film-maker François Truffaut.

The amazing opening scene: