Orson Welles’s, 1958 international noir Touch of Evil can proudly join my theoretical list of under-appreciated and under-viewed classics. It’s thankfully brisker, more red blooded and wholly more entertaining than Welles’s over-analyzed, dreary masterpiece, Citizen Kane.
In Touch of Evil, Charlton Heston plays a Mexican narcotics agent who becomes involved with a car-bombing incident, initially unrelated to his high-profile international drug lord court case. In case you read that too fast, yes, Charlton Heston plays a Mexican. Get over it. The man played a Jewish Egyptian in The Ten Commandments and he played “Good Actor” in Wayne’s World 2 (zing!). Seriously, he gives a relatively un-distracting lead performance for two-thirds of the movie. Everything kind of reaches a, highly enjoyable, surreal moment when Heston beats up five or six Mexican teenagers while shouting, “Donde esta mi espousa!?!” This might possibly be my favorite “Heston Moment” outside of Planet of the Apes.
Impressively, Heston’s performance is actually second chair to Orson Welles himself. Possibly believing no one can play a belligerent fat man like he, Welles heroically directs the eloquent film while filling the screen with a very un-eloquent American chief of police. Welles’s character (Quinlan) is a mix of Police Chief Wiggum and Vice President Dick Cheney. Leonard Dicaprio wishes he could play a large, quasi-moral authority like this. With Welles, there is no pretension, just pragmatism.
Orson Welles, hopefully wearing makeup and a fat suit, takes up enough room to warrant shots from aerial view, but his size is just another weapon in his arsenal of intimidation. Quinlan’s dogmatic investigations earn the respect of colleagues and fear of criminals; and just that Quinlan distresses society’s enemies is enough for law abiders to appreciate, if not applaud, the big guy. Such a sentiment resurrects the disgusting, sarcastic, former campaign quip, “Who would the terrorists vote for?”
Twice the cop of Sonny Crockett...and 1.5 times the man of a later Don Johnson.
To a scene, Quinlan dominates the pacing, energy and direction of all involved and through this power achieves even more admiration. Each character accepts the mindset that if you can’t stop a runaway truck you might as well get out of the way. For those in power, society is always on the verge of collapsing. If it’s not threats from outside, it’s threats from inside. The word “safe” could only be uttered as a whisper throughout American history and has been all but removed from the nation’s lexicon since the 1950s. I think this is why we are so ready to accept Quinlan election after election. Sure, rounding up innocent people is unfortunate if by accident and wrong if on purpose; but rounding up people who we know are guilty? Why, that’s an imperative.
Despite unintelligible swearing, stumbling around and chronic candy bar-munching, Quinlan’s laser wit and vengeful obsessions prove dangerous to peripheral characters, yet inspiring to the following decades of (fictional) cops who disregard any philosophical line separating legality, as they “know what’s right.”
The antagonist to these shameful American acceptances is Miguel Vargas (Heston). Despite being a Mexican government official, Vargas has not a trace of any “foreign” accent--no doubt more of an attempt to gain (American) audience sympathy than an accusation of incompetent acting on the part of Heston. To Americanize Vargas even more, he has Janet Leigh as a wife, goes by the name “Michael” and voices no real interest in futbol. Heston, by way of being Heston, demands the audience’s appreciation yet can’t shake off the image of an annoying ACLU lawyer. To hell with your delicate sensibilities, we sneer at Vargas, Quinlan gets results and Quinlan gets the bad guys. In less then three hundred years, America has molded national principles from enlightenment to efficiency. Anymore it seems pragmatism is patriotism. Has democracy failed those who are unhappy? No, the unhappy have failed the test of democracy.
This movie was released five years before the arrest of Ernesto Miranda, making the whole cinematic discussion uncommonly prophetic. As that real-life story goes, Miranda confessed to raping an 18-year-old but was unaware of his rights to have a lawyer during the resulting interrogation. Any speculation that Miranda “probably” raped somebody was muted by his own rights violation--which absolutely outraged the (arguably existent) Silent Majority. The outrage was short-lived as Miranda was convicted without his confession, released in 1972 and killed in a bar fight four years later. A suspect was picked up for the murder, was read his Miranda rights, declined to give a statement and was released. The Miranda murder case was closed without a conviction. Similarly, Quinlan’s ultimate defense for abuses of power rests in the fact that his assumptions are always correct. For--in the land of the free--there is nothing wrong with jailing criminals, fair trial or no.
While Heston smooths over (or at least distorts) any accusations of racism, Internet-educated audiences will be more baffled by the film’s relationship with marijuana. The apparent paranoia in 1958 of marijuana is used as a staggeringly weak plot-device to “knock out” Janet Leigh, transport her and keep her incapacitated for the better part of two days. Discussion of legality aside, evidently we all need to set some rules about marijuana use in films. Personal history shows me that ol’ Mary Jane doesn’t do much more than slow people down and explain the continued existence of Wendy’s chicken nuggets--but that's all beside the point. Regarding the film’s convoluted and panic-pandering depiction, there is no answer to how the leather jacket-wearing Mexican youths forced Leigh to get higher than James Franco piloting a blimp.
With a nod to technical analysis, Welles stages scenes and camera shots with a direct stylization rarely seen outside—or ever missing from—the film’s noir genre. Perhaps the most masterful decision is the opening shot of the film wherein a bomb is placed in a car’s trunk. For nearly four minutes, and in one continuous shot, audiences watch the car drive around a small border town. The intensity is stretched with such focus and grace that Johhny Q Moviegoer won’t even notice why the scene is as suspenseful as it is. For a man with a history in radio entertainment, Welles’s understanding of cinema had to be instinctual to a point that’s simply not possible anymore.
At best, it’s hard to say Touch of Evil is underrated; at worst, it’s incorrect. Film scholars, critics, students and snobs repeatedly report the film as a classic, when they’ve seen it. So maybe it’s not underrated, but rather—in the vein of Singin’ in the Rain and Sullivan’s Travels—is a genuine piece of entertainment dismissed by the average antecedent generations. Strange to think what would happen if more films of equal deserving were launched back into theaters; and not just unnecessary re-releases of literally the most-seen movies of all-time: Titanic, Avatar, E.T., Star Wars (yet again!) and so on.
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