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Summary: Welles Rewrite
Review: The Wellesian film is a truly unique experience .Marlene Deitrich is here to offer Welles, character his own fate " you have not got any" ! When you fist see the first reel of this film you are not sure where the director is going with the material..however this is Welles..and nothing is standard on his set. Joseph Calleia plays the sympathetic detective and his close ups are daring. Mercedes McCambridge has a most bizzare part as the drug queen.This is one of the greatest film editing jobs ever. Not Universal chop job but the montages in the film itself. Uncle Joe Grandes scene in the hotel..and the finale is like a Greek tragedy.. How does one explain the un explainable ? You cant just catch this film..
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Summary: Will Welles' cut appear on DVD?
Review: I was able to see Orson Welles' cut of "Touch of Evil" and it's MUCH better than the video version sold here. I'm wondering if ORSON WELLES' CUT will appear on DVD anytime soon.
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Summary: Dark Joy
Review: This has to be the best movie that Wells ever made. Dark and eerie. It starts off in the dark streets of a border town and moves back and forth between countries. Soon it is hard to tell where we are. We move between evil and good and often seem to loose track of these borders as well. I say "we" because the viewer is absorbed into the film through the excellent camera work. The settings get darker and darker. In one scene Deitrich tells Wells that his future is all used up. All of the characters spiral downward into a relm of dark, futureless madness that is touched by evil. Excellent acting, camera work, mood, dialogue,and scenery make this a noir classic. Perhaps, all noir films should be judged by this outstanding work. At the end, the viewer feels that a bath is necessary after having traversed Wells' bleak and grimy terrain. The restored "new" version is well worth the effort to obtain.
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Summary: A LESSON IN FILM MAKING
Review: This excellent film, some say the equal or better of Citizen Kane, can ne analyzed shot for shot to see Welles's brilliance as a film maker. The cast is well up to the job, including some surprises such as Charleton Heston. The restored version is coming out on DVD in Septemer of '99. I can hardly wait.
Rating:
Summary: Not the restored/re-cut version, but still good
Review: A terrific Welles movie, and a must-own for ardent Welles or Film Noir fans, since this is (a) Welles' last studio picture and (b) often called "the last film noir". Charlton Heston plays a Mexican detective, Janet Leigh is great in a pre-Psycho creepy motel, and the supporting cast (including Dietrich and -- don't blink -- Zsa Zsa Gabor). Entertaining and great to look at. The original aspect ratio is 1.66:1, and this video is 1.33, but I didn't notice any pan-and-scan in this transfer (1.66 and 1.33 aren't THAT different, I guess...they didn't even bother putting Strangelove in 1.66 on the DVD, but I digress...) Looking forward to the VHS/DVD(?) release of the new, re-cut version, and am eager to compare the two. In case anyone is interested, TOE is referenced in Ed Wood, Get Shorty, and its opening shot is famously spoofed in The Player.
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Summary: Welle's Great, Tawdry, Incomparable Masterpiece
Review: TOUCH OF EVIL has (as Pauline Kael put it) "a cast assembled in a nightmare"--Heston, Janet Lee, Marlene Dietrich, Ray Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mercedes McCambridge et al. Don't pay attention to the folks who worry about "campy" performances--this is a certified masterpiece, compelling on every level. It also is notable for Dietrich's finest performance after THE BLUE ANGEL; her final line--the last line of the movie--will break your heart.
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Summary: Which one now?
Review: If this is the re-edited version, it is a must see. I have not seen the original studio cut though. A grotesque and outstanding film!
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Summary: WATCH THIS ONE WITH ALL LIGHTS OUT!!!
Review: This intense, fast-paced, and even humorous film noir is the BEST of the genre. Its eery cinematography and Charlton Heston's high pitched voice contributes a great deal to this 1958 thriller of murder, corruption, power, legacy, and propaganda along a small, dusty Mexican border line. Orson Welles is perfect as Hank Quinlan, a complacent detective of thirty years who is destined to prove himself one step higher of his Mexican colleague Heston. Narcotics agent Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) is sure that Welles had framed bystanders to add to his arrest record. And when a car explodes at the beginning of the film, Quinlan is able to track down clues pointing to the bomb; Vargas determined to prove him a framer. Janet Leigh as Mr. Heston's newleywed wife is excellent as neutral to this whole case, forced to be detained at a dumpy hotel, with gangsters plagueing it. An excellent movie, at the least. Watch it, love it, and get to know what corruption means!
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Summary: The Master In Spite Of Himself
Review: How can a movie be so clumsy and so fascinating at the same time? The acting - especially Janet Leigh's, Dennis Weaver's and Akim Tamiroff's - is so broadly campy that it's embarassing. Charlton Heston as a Mexican brings all new dimensions to the term "suspension of disbelief." The dialogue frequently dovetails into ridiculous hyperbole ("You know 'bout de marre-you-wana?"), the celebrated editing often confuses (for example, at the end we hear a single gun shot but two men lie wounded), and the plot takes some pretty weird turns (why torment Janet Leigh in a motel only to drug her unconscious?). Orson Welles manages to turn these gaffes to his advantage - he makes them theatrical and the film creates a heightened state of unreality like a nightmare running on its own crazy logic. The plot is a squalid murder story that doesn't approach the scope or reach of "Citizen Kane" but it does provide Welles with one of his greatest screen personas - Hank Quinlan, the rotting and corrupt detective who frames suspects to support his hunches. Quinlan is never anything less than odious but Welles, ingeniously, invests some sympathy in the character: he becomes of the man of intuition and genius (Quinlan's hunches usually turn out to be right) who never realizes his full potential and is brought low by by-the-book bureaucrats (Heston's character, Vargas, is a self-righteous stiff). This metaphor of Welles's own cinematic career - he never directed in Hollywood again - would be too blunt and self-serving were it not his own sense of self-mockery and for the garish carnival atmosphere that surrounds the whole picture. The film works almost against its source material - a straight-faced b-grade crime melodrama viewed through a fun-house mirror - and Welles makes it thoroughly enthralling. Not a masterpiece on the same plane with "Kane" but a wildly unique stylistic achievement.
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Summary: Kicks CITIZEN KANE bigtime!
Review: Not just the best film noir ever made, but quite possibly the best MOVIE ever made, this film is black & white dynamite! From the ASTOUNDING opening shot to closing credits, Welles puts the screws on and just keeps turnin'. And if Marlena Deitrich can play a Mexican, why not Charleton Heston?
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