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Official Synopsis:
Experience director Orson Welles' masterpiece Touch of Evil like never before in an all-new 50th Anniversary Edition DVD! Starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Orson Welles himself, this exceptional film noir portrait of corruption and morally compromised obsessions tells the story of a crooked police chief who frames a Mexican youth as part of an intricate criminal plot.
Now, for the first time ever, see all three versions of the film - the preview version, the theatrical version and the restored version based on Orson Welles' vision. The Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition commemorates a true cinematic achievement and is an essential addition to every movie lover's library!
- Restored Version: Re-edited in 1998, this definitive cut of the film is restored to Orson Welles' vision based on his detailed 58-page memo to the studio.
- Theatrical Version: This original version of the film was seen by U.S. audiences when it was released in theaters in 1958.
- Preview Version: Created prior to the theatrical version, this cut of the film incorporates some of Orson Welles' requests and was discovered by Universal in 1976.
Our Take:
There are good directors, great directors, legendary directors, and then Orson Welles. Many regard Welles as the greatest director ever to use a camera, disastrously ahead of his time; Welles was the prototypical wunderkind, a cinematic Mozart. Due to his wunderkind status, Welles was sadly crushed under the restrictive studio system in place when he was making films. As a result, Welles sadly does not have the extensive oeuvre that his skill demands and to make matters worse constant post-production studio meddling always leaves viewers doubting whether what they are watching is indeed Welles’ intended version of the film. Touch of Evil is one of the films that was heavily hacked to bits by the studio at the time of its release, but luckily, in 1998 it was re-edited according to a highly detailed 58-page memo Welles sent to the studio brass. This memo is included in its entirety in Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition. Also, for the sake of comparison, the inferior Preview and Theatrical versions of the film are also included, but without a doubt, other than as curiosities, the Restored version of Touch of Evil is the definitive version of the film and the version that I will be discussing in this review.
Those who knew Orson Welles best, namely Peter Bogdanovich, speak of Welles as a director who did not like to be showy with the camera, but would be if he felt there was no other way to do a scene. Touch of Evil opens with one of those decidedly necessary showy camera sequences as Welles opens the film with one of the greatest uninterrupted tracking shots in cinema history (right up there with the famed Goodfellas scene, and beautifully copied in the opening of Boogie Nights) as we follow a car with a bomb placed in its trunk across the Mexican-American border. The scene is easily perfect in the film and deserves to be watched repeatedly. The complexity of the scene with diegetic sound utilized throughout is breathtaking as we fleetingly pick up the sounds of the streets and follow different characters all in one continuous shot. This beautiful scene culminates with the car naturally exploding and it is against the fiery backdrop that we are introduced to the equally fiery Police Captain Hank Quinlan (played perfectly by Orson Welles) and his soon to become adversary Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston). The film does well to split itself between the two tales of Mike Vargas and his quest to reveal the truth about Quinlan, who plants evidence in order to always nab the bad guy, and Mike’s wife, Susie Vargas (Janet Leigh) who is tormented by the Mexican gang that her husband is attempting to put behind bars. This effect works beautifully as Welles masterful use of crosscutting the two stories keeps the viewer up to speed with the pace of the film.
Even with the film featuring extensive cross-cutting between the two stories of Mike and Susie Vargas, it is never anything but a film about the pulling back of the curtain on a larger than life figure, a theme seen throughout many of Welles’ films (such as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons). Welles outshine all other actors in Touch of Evil with his deliciously hammy but necessary portrayal of Hank Quinlan, whose final demise is up there with that of Edward G. Robinson’s in Little Caesar. In keeping with Welles being ahead of his time, Quinlan can most easily be seen in Denzel Washington’s character in Training Day. Welles’ effect on contemporary cinema never ceases to amaze me. In Touch of Evil, his use of handheld cameras is simply revelatory and generally unheard of at the time in studio pictures. Just about everything seen in Touch of Evil can be followed through the history of cinema and found in the greatest works to come out in the past decade or two, whether it be opening crane tracking shot in Boogie Nights or the parallel character of Alonzo (Denzel Washington) in Training Day.
Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition is sure to become a classroom staple. It is the type of academic study of an important film that many associate with the Criterion Collection, but is in fact released by Universal Studios. The two-disc release includes the famed 58-page memo within the slipcase as well as the following special features:
Disc 1 -
* Commentary - By Restoration Producer Rick Schmidlin.
* Commentary - By Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, and restoration producer Rick Schmidlin.
* Bringing Evil to Life (21 minutes) – An engaging documentary concerning the making of the film
* Evil Lost and Found (17 minutes) – The perfect companion piece to the other documentary, which picks up after production of the film wrapped. The featurette concludes with L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson taking us on a tour of Venice Beach, CA where the film was shot and showing what key locations look like today
* Original Theatrical Trailer.
Disc 2
* Commentary - With Author and Filmmaker F.X. Feeney (Theatrical Version)
* Commentary - With Welles experts Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore (Preview Version)
With every version of the film, four audio commentaries, and two excellent documentary featurettes, Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition is simply one of those DVD releases whose absence from a DVD collection makes the entire collection seem incomplete. Anyone even remotely interested in, excited about, or knowledgeable about film should pick-up Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition.
MANDATORY!
Overall Picture:
Movie: A+
DVD: A+
- Matthew Orlando
Staff Writer
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