Return to Intro. to Film syllabus
Updated 24 October 2006
ENGLISH 114: INTRODUCTION TO FILM, Fall 2006
Section 3: Thursday, 6:00-9:30 p.m.,
Professor Larsson
Guest Lecturer: Antoinette Cole
Week 8, October 19
6:00-7:55
View Touch of Evil
7:55-8:05
Break
8:05-9:15
Discussion of Touch of Evil
9:15-9:30
Quiz 4
NOTE CHANGE IN SCHEDULE: In order to make sure that any questions concerning cinematography or Touch of Evil have been addressed, Test 2 will take place on Week 10, November 2, instead of October 26.
Notes on Touch of Evil
(see Barsam’s discussion in the Chapter 4 Case Study online)
This is actually the third version of Orson Welles’ film to be made available to the public. Richard Barsam’s online Case Study of the film discusses Welles’ career and how before Touch of Evil Welles had gone through the ups and downs of fame and success to virtual self-exile in Europe, where he continued to make films on his own terms that were financed in part by his appearances in commercials and in supporting roles on film. Although he had made an acclaimed version of Othello in 1952 while in Europe, Touch of Evil would be his first American film since his low-budget Macbeth in 1948 (which also has recently been restored). It would be his last American film ever. Some missing shots were restored to the film in the mid-1970s, making it much more coherent than on its original studio release, but it was not until this 1998 version that the film was finally restored to something like the way that Welles originally intended.
As Barsam points out, Welles had already been hired to act in the film, but it was star Charlton Heston who insisted that Welles be the director. Barsam discusses the many features that make this one of Welles’ most notable films and also what many regard as the last great film noir of the 1950s. Welles’ use of extreme camera angles, shocking cuts in editing, and stark contrasts in lighting push the film noir style to its limits. The long opening crane shot that takes us from one side of the border to the other and introduces us to Vargas and Susan while the bomb ticks away is one of the most famous individual shots in film history. As Barsam remarks, the result of Welles’ use of lighting, setting, and camerawork creates a kind of nightmare world of labyrinths. (The film was actually shot in Venice, California, then a deteriorating slum and now one of the trendiest neighborhoods in greater Los Angeles.) The character who epitomizes the sense of strangeness and dislocation is the hysterical “Night Man” who manages the motel (played by Dennis Weaver, who also co-starred in Gunsmoke and later played the cowboy detective McCloud on television).
Barsam discusses how the film reveals and criticizes the racist attitudes of the corrupt sherrif, Hank Quinlan (Welles), but also shows the racist assumptions in many of the other American characters, including Mike Vargas’ own wife, Susan (Janet Leigh, 2 years before she would again face danger in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho). In fact, the script continually undermines racist assumptions, not only in Vargas’ character and the Grandi name but in the guest appearances of the Hungarian Zsa Zsa Gabor as a stripper and the German Marlene Dietrich as the prostitute Tanya.
Another dimension to the film, though, is how Welles’ mise-en-scene is used to critique Vargas (Heston) himself. Even though Quinlan is physically grotesque (fat, unshaven and unkempt) and morally corrupt (planting evidence and resorting to brutality), he is something of a tragic hero, a once-good cop turned bad because of his obsession with his murdered wife. He had managed to turn away from drinking to but that only led to his overeating (he calls for donuts while interrogating a witness, he confesses to Tanya that he had a choice between candy bars and the “hooch”). However, as he becomes obsessed with Vargas, who represents a threat to his authority, he allows Grandi to seduce him with drink, leading to his final fall into becoming a murderer. Shortly before the final scene, Hank goes back to Tanya’s place, and we see him framed against a wall with a bull’s horns and bullfighters’ spears circling his head. Hank, the shot implies, is like a bull about to go his final round in a sacrificial ritual.
However, Vargas, even though he represents the forces of justice, is not a perfect hero. He puts his own wife in danger by putting “international relations” and national image ahead of her, and he winds up resorting to near-vigilante justice himself when he attacks the Grandi gang in the bar. And it takes Menzies, Hank’s friend and partner, to finally realize Quinlan’s corruption and offer to help Vargas by betraying Hank. Menzies himself is possibly the most noble character in the film, one who pays with his own life.
Welles makes the criticism of Vargas even sharper by his use of mise-en-scene. In the tape recording scene, Vargas skulks through the polluted waters of the canal, trying to tape Quinlan’s confession to Menzies. In many scenes, Vargas is posed in frames within the film frame—doorways, halls, and rows of file cabinets. The most notable example is the long take of Vargas and Schwartz driving down a long alleyway with the building walls looming on each side. These scenes enclose Vargas and suggest his own obsessive behavior (not unlike Johnny in The General but far less funny), concentrating on a single course of action (taking down Quinlan) while failing to see more immediate dangers at hand.
Welles offers a number of hints that Vargas is “blind” to what is going on around him, most notably during the scene when Quinlan is interrogating the young man suspected of planting the bomb. As he crosses the street to a shop, Vargas puts on dark glasses, but fails to see Menzies (holding a cane that Quinlan had left behind) and Grandi drive up right behind him and he doesn’t see the two men quarreling on the street while he places a call to Susan on the telephone in the store. The store itself is owned by a blind woman, and a sign above Vargas’ head reads, “If you are mean enough to steal from the blind, help yourself.” In that scene, Vargas fails to pick up on Susan’s cues that she wants him to return to her, and he also does not recognize that the motel is now in the hands of Grandi’s gang. Later, on his way to beat up the Grandi gang in the bar, he drives right past Susan as she calls for help from the room where Quinlan murdered Grandi. (The murder scene itself refers back to the scene in the blind woman’s shop—Quinlan has again forgotten his cane, which will convince Menzies to help Vargas at last.)
And at the end, even though he’s finally reunited with Susan, Vargas rushes off with her, oblivious to the tragedy of the dead Quinlan and of Menzies, who gave his own life for him and Susan.
Welles’ films rarely end on a clear note. The director often probes the motives and behaviors of individuals without finding some sympathetic or critical note in each character. In the end, he gives us life in its complexity, where people do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, both good and bad.