Touch of Evil (1958) Director: Orson Welles
“A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.”
★★★★★
Touch of Evil is yet another classic Orson Welles masterpiece that was unceremoniously chopped up by studio, Universal-International, prior to release. Mercifully, decades later, Touch of Evil was edited and re-released to closely match notes left behind in a 58-page memo by Welles. This restored version of the film by Walter Murch in 1998 is the version I was fortunate enough to see on the big screen at a local independent theater recently. It adds several valuable scenes to the film that were cut by Universal Amidst all the turmoil and disputes with Welles after the film was complete, Touch of Evil was released as a B-movie and was unfortunately given minimal promotion. Apparently, Universal found it to be too dark and confusing for ordinary audiences, but has since come to be regarded as one of the great masterpieces of all time. Touch of Evil is about a car bomb that is detonated when crossing the southern border and causes a rift between two rival policemen.
One of the final film noir’s from the classic era (and the last film Orson Welles would make with studio money), Touch of Evil takes place along the bustling, noisy, dark, morally grey U.S.-Mexico border, a world filled with trash, sweat, drugs, loose women, and gangsters. In a famous three-minute-twenty-second single shot opening scene (which took an entire night to film) –one of the greatest in cinematic history– a bomb is tossed into the trunk of a car which blows up a short distance away just across the U.S. border. The explosion kills two people: Rudy Linnekar who is driving the car (Jeffrey Green) and his young female counterpart, a “strip teaser” named Zita (Joi Lansing). The sound sequencing throughout this opening shot is filled with a whole cacophony of jazz and drums amidst busy lights and people hustling around along the streets of this border town. Mike Vargas, a Mexican prosecutor (played by Charlton Heston in brownface) has recently locked up a local dope-dealing gangster, a member of the infamous Grandi family, who will have his trial soon in Mexico City. And although he is now honeymooning with his beautiful blonde wife, Susie (Janet Leigh), he still has a reputation among the locals for rooting out corruption. Interestingly enough, in Touch of Evil it is not a white American man who is the straight harbinger of morality, but rather a brown-skinned Mexican cop. Here, Welles intentionally flips the racial and ethnic identities of the main characters, perhaps as a way of playfully exploring traditional noir tropes. And the two newlyweds are also culturally distinct –Vargas is from Mexico and Susie is from Philadelphia. Their trip across the border is to be their first joint visit to Susie’s homeland, the United States, while Vargas worries that the car bomb situation could be very bad for “us” (and by “us” he means Mexico, where his true loyalties lie). In more ways than one, these lovers are trapped on either side of the border, even if Vargas is the chairman of the Pan-American Narcotics Commission. But Susie seems entirely naive and out of place in Mexico. The moment Vargas steps away to deal with the flaming car wreckage, she is almost instantly taken away by a band of hoodlums working for Uncle Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), brother of Vic Grandi, the dope-dealer Vargas recently put away (their other two brothers were both killed). This is all a clever bit of foreshadowing of things to come. Needless to say, they threaten her husband but she still feels safe because her husband is “a great big official in the government” (he has “practically cabinet status with the Mexican government”).
Meanwhile Vargas gets tied up with a gaggle of bureaucrats, many of who mare played by Orson Welles regulars –a Washington bureaucrat named Blaine (Phil Harvey), Al Schwartz who works for the DA’s office (Mort Milles), District Attorney Adair (Ray Collins), Police Sergeant Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia), Chief Gould (Harry Shannon), and of course the large, bloated, sweaty, cigar-smoking Police Captain Hank Quinlin (Orson Welles) who has been awoken from his ranch to come out and join all these fellows (these government officials happened to be on the scene so quickly because they were all at Tootsie’s Steak House together). At any rate, this explosion quickly leads to a kind of international incident –who has jurisdiction over this case if the bomb was planted in Mexico, but it detonated in the United States? Vargas is quick to claim he is merely what the United Nations would call a “political observer.” Nevertheless, despite being on his honeymoon, Vargas continues to tag along for the investigation. As the group goes to make inquiries with all the “strip teasers” where Zita worked, Vargas is attacked with a bottle of acid from an unknown assailant (the bottle misses and destroys a nearby poster for Zita on the wall). Inside, the girls are all mum but the elder District Attorney Adair rather hilariously seems interested in the cabaret girls. Meanwhile, we also learn about Hank Quinlan’s “old friend” and presumed former lover, a fortune-telling prostitute on the Mexican side of the border named Tana (Marlene Dietrich), though she no longer recognizes him due to his corpulence. Quinlan asks if she knows anything about the bomb and hopes he can come sample her chili sometime, to which she responds: “Better be careful. May be too hot for you.”
Newlyweds Vargas and Susie start bickering –Susie is disappointed that her husband is too focused on the case, and Vargas is disappointed that his wife finds Mexico to be unsafe: “This isn’t the real Mexico and you know that. All border towns bring out the worst in a country.” Vargas wants Susie to travel to Mexico City ahead of him for the upcoming trial, but she wants to cross the border and stay at an American motel where she will feel safer, but Vargas takes offense over the idea that she doesn’t think Mexico is safe. One wonders how in the world there marriage will potentially survive this gulf between them? At any rate, after being blackmailed with a photograph by the Grandi crew, Susie decides to stay in a remote motel on the American side of the border (the Mirador Motel outside the town of Los Robles) where she is the only customer. The night manager is a goofy eccentric loner (one can draw a line here from Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) but the motel is quickly overtaken by the Grandi boys (one of whom is shaky and hopped up on heroin). At the same time, Vargas joins Captain Quinlan as they question Rudy Linnekar’s daughter, Marcia Linnekar, who seems strangely unaffected by her father’s death. They learn that she has actually been living with her Mexican lover, a shoe clerk named Manolo Sanchez (Victor Millan). Her father disapproved of their marriage prospects, but upon his death, Marcia is now set to inherit $1 million. Captain Quinlan gets another one of his famous hunches as he strongly accuses Sanchez of panting the car bomb. During the course of the interrogation, Vargas steps into the bathroom where he accidentally knocks over a small empty shoe box. But later, after Captain Quinlan returns to the room, one of his associates discovers two pieces of dynamite stashed in the same box. Immediately, Vargas suspects Captain Quinlan has planted evidence to frame young Sanchez. He starts investigating Captain Quinlan with some help from the District Attorney’s office (at least at first), while Quinlan realizes he has been cornered by this righteous Mexican prosecutor.
Seizing the moment, Uncle Joe Grandi takes Captain Quinlan out for drinks and hatches a secret plot with him wherein Grandi’s hoodlums kidnap Vargas’s wife Susie from the Mirador motel. In a highly dramatic and uncomfortably long scene, the Grandi boys (and a few tough looking young women who are suggested to be lesbians) infiltrate her room amidst a series of oblong shots filled with light and shadow. They hold Susie’s legs down and fill her with drugs (marijuana and heroin a la classic “reefer madness” films), then strip her naked and bring her to a hotel room while she is unconscious. The fact that she is stripped naked invites the question as to whether or not she has been raped by the Grandi boys and girls. A very drunk and sweaty Captain Quinlan arrives at the hotel room with Uncle Grandi, but he pulls on a pair of black gloves and suddenly turns on Grandi and strangles him, leaving him hanging over Susie’s face on the bed. When Susie awakens, she looks straight into the terrifying bulging eyes of Uncle Joe Grandi’s swollen face. She screams and dashes out onto her hotel balcony wearing only a bedsheet.
Captain Quinlan (with help from Uncle Joe Grandi) have been trying to frame Vargas and his wife as drug addicts, however Quinlan’s wing-man Sgt. Pete Menzies has started noticing his partner’s recent absence and drunkenness during this big case. In the hotel room, he spots Quinlan’s cane lying at the scene of the crime. He shares this with Vargas and together they decide to take Quinlan down. Wearing a wire, Sgt. Menzies lures Quinlan out of his drunken stupor at Tana’s house (complete with its western pianola player-piano loudly blasting a saloon tune) and as they walk and talk, Vargas struggles to keep up with them and maintain the signal. But when the two cross over a bridge on a grimy, garbage-filled river, Quinlan suddenly hears an echo emanating from beneath the bridge. He suspects Vargas and Sgt. Sgt. Menzies are in cahoots. A violent confrontation ensues as Quinlan shoots his partner. He then stumbles down into the piles of garbage to kill Vargas, but a dying Sgt. Menzies shoots Quinlan (the ‘second bullet’ Quinlan has taken for him) while the police arrive and Vargas is vindicated. Tana watches as Quinlan collapses and falls over into the filthy water. Did she love him? She merely says: “He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?”
And as it turns out, Quinlan has also been vindicated –the real culprit behind the car bomb was actually Sanchez this whole time. Quinlan’s hunches have often proven correct, and this is no exception, even as his unlawful practices make him a criminal, himself. In a way, Quinlan employs his own “touch of evil” when solving cases. His years of planting evidence and framing suspects is something a morally pure character like Vargas simply cannot fathom.
Shot in Venice, California (despite Welles’s request to shoot the film on location in Mexico), Touch of Evil is a technical wonder, an extraordinary cinematic carnival thanks to the experimental and exhilarating cinematography of Russell Metty, with sweeping crane shots and rapid tracking, as well as shaky cam and even a scene of characters driving in a real car (as opposed to a prop car with a faux backdrop). There are also flashes of Henry Mancini’s unique musical score a la The Pink Panther as music serves a key role in the film, often being played for uncomfortably long musical sequences (as in the case of the strange music that is blasted at the Mirador motel while Susie is trying to sleep). And lastly, Touch of Evil masterfully plays with the audience’s feeling of disorientation, as anarchic comedy is riddled throughout the film and dialogue is often garbled as characters talk over each other and key points are sometimes deliberately muddled. It’s no wonder that great directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut admired this film.
Credits:
- Director: Orson Welles
- Screenplay by: Orson Welles (based on the 1956 pulp mystery novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson)
- Produced by: Albert Zugsmith
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston…..Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas (in brownface)
- The original character was actually a white Assistant DA named Mike Holt with a hispanic bride named Consuelo. However, Welles decided to switch the ethnicities to emphasize the racial dynamic in the film. Welles tracked down a top tailor in Mexico who fashioned all the suits Heston wears in the film.
- Janet Leigh…..Susan “Susie” Vargas (Mike Vargas’s new wife)
- Janet Leigh’s agent initially rejected this role due to the low salary, but when Orson Welles sent her a telegram she contacted her agent, furious, and stated that being directed by Orson Welles was more important than money.
- Orson Welles…..Police Captain Hank Quinlan
- Orson Welles was paid as an actor for this film, not as a director or screenwriter. His character, Captain Hank Quinlan, is a big, bloated, corrupt police captain who used to be romantically involved with the jaded prostitute and fortune teller Tana, played by Marlene Dietrich. Years ago, he used to stay at her house for days at a time with a bottle of whiskey, but for twelve years he stopped drinking (allegedly) and now favors eating candy bars. Additionally, he was once married but his wife was murdered via strangulation, leaving no signs.
- Joseph Calleia…..Sgt. Pete Menzies, Captain Hank Quinlan’s partner
- Orson Welles was a long-time admirer of Joseph Calleia’s acting.
- Akim Tamiroff…..Uncle Joe Grandi
- Orson Welles previously cast Akim Tamiroff in Mr. Arkadin (1955). In Touch of Evil, there is a hilarious running joke about his “rug,” or hairpiece, which keeps falling off.
- Joanna Moore…..Marcia Linnekar, daughter of Rudy Linnekar, the man who dies in the car explosion at the outset
- Producer Albert Zugsmith met Joanna Cook Moore at a party and decided she was right for this role.
- Ray Collins…..District Attorney Adair
- Dennis Weaver…..the jittery oddball Night Manager at the desolate Mirador motel
- Dennis Weaver was asked to audition for the role of the night manager after Welles had watched him as Chester Goode on Gunsmoke. He was instructed to improvise his role. Weaver later was given his own television show called McCloud and he starred in Steven Spielberg’s debut film Duel (1971).
- Valentin de Vargas…..Pancho, the jacket wearing ringleader of Grandi’s hoodlums
- Mort Mills…..Al Schwartz
- Mort Mills famously played the highway patrol officer who stops Janet Leigh’s character Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).
- Victor Millan…..Manolo Sanchez, the young Mexican man living with Marcia Linnekar, daughter of the late Rudy Linnekar
- Lalo Rios…..Risto
- Michael Sargent…..Pretty Boy
- Phil Harvey…..Blaine
- Joi Lansing…..Zita, the woman accompanying Rudy Linnekar when they are blown up at the outset
- Jeffrey Green…..Rudy Linnekar (uncredited), the man driving the car that is blown up at the outset
- Harry Shannon…..Police Chief Pete Gould
- Marlene Dietrich…..Tana
- Zsa Zsa Gabor…..the Strip-club owner
- Producer Albert Zugsmith insisted that his friend Zsa Zsa Gabor be given a cameo in the film. She is onscreen for a total of about twenty seconds
- Rusty Wescoatt…..Casey
- Wayne Taylor…..gang member
- Ken Miller…..gang member
- Raymond Rodriguez…..gang member
- Arlene McQuade…..Ginnie
- Dan White…..Border Guard
- Mercedes McCambridge…..gang leader
- William Tannen…..Howard Frantz
- Joseph Cotten…..coroner (uncredited)
- Keenan Wynn…..bartender (uncredited)
- Charlton Heston…..Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas (in brownface)
- Cinematography by: Russell Metty
- Edited by: Virgil Vogel and Aaron Stell
- Music by: Henry Mancini
- Production Company: Universal-International
Other Notes:
- First, Charlton Heston was hired to star in this film, fresh off his promotional tour for The Ten Commandments (1956). Upon being informed that Orson Welles would co-star in the film, Heston suggested he be offered the role of director. When the studio agreed, Welles negotiated into his contract that he would also re-write the script as well, though this turned out to be an extensive project that took place about a couple weeks with an army of secretaries helping him.
- Welles made numerous changes to the film, such as reversing the ethnicities of both Heston’s and Leigh’s characters. He also moved the primary setting of the film from a city in California to a remote town along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Welles had previously starred in Man in the Shadow (1957), which Albert Zugsmith produced.
- Actors Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Marlene Dietrich, and Keenan Wynn agreed to appear in this film for union pay scale and without screen credit however they were all later paid above union scale and given screen credit.
- The famous opening scene was shot over a night with many retakes. In the final take (which is used in the film) you can see the dawn breaking in the background.
- The first line of dialogue spoken in the film is a U.S. customs agent asking, “Are you folks American citizens?” The extensive opening shot had to be redone many times throughout the night because this unhappy actor kept forgetting his lines. Universal crew encouraged Welles to fire the man, but Welles simply told him that for the final take if he forgets his lines, he must simply ad-lib so the they could be dubbed in later.
- The final line of dialogue in the film is Tana (Marlene Dietrich’s character) saying “adios.”
- Touch of Evil was later screened in 1958 at the Brussels World Fair where Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut awarded it the top prize. Both directors have often cited Touch of Evil as a key influence on their films.
- Contrary to popular belief, Welles was given pounds of makeup in order to make him appear significantly overweight as Captain Quinlan.