Sometimes people do their best work when their back is against the wall. When hired to appear in sleazy tex-mex noir, Touch Of Evil, former Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, was something of a Hollywood pariah and it was actually star Charlton Heston who suggested to the producers that the former cinematic legend also direct. Welles accepted on the agreement that he also rewrite the script, which itself was a loose adaptation of the novel Badge Of Evil by Whit Masterson.
Hardly the most auspicious start to a film, but despite dramatics with studio heads and getting critically mauled upon release, Welles greasy, grimy battle of morals has since gone on to be reassessed as not only one of the greatest noirs ever made, but also one of the finest cinematic accomplishments it’s director ever crafted. Technically masterful and thematically juicy, you can tell a movie is good when you’re willing to accept the potentially thorny prospect of a heavily made-up Heston playing a Mexican… Deal with it or don’t, Touch Of Evil is undoubtedly also touched by greatness.
A time bomb stashed in the trunk of car kills two people when it explodes while crossing the U.S. – Mexico border, and after witnessing the conflagration, Mexican special prosecutor Miguel Vargas puts his honeymoon on hold to get involved with the investigation. Obviously this doesn’t sit particularly well with his American wife, Susie, but there are some who express a dislike of his presence for other, more distasteful reasons.
Seeing his interference as something of an insult, vastly husky police captain Hank Quinlan is something of a bigot and openly treats Vargas with distrust as the two inevitably bicker over who has jurisdiction and the methods used by the heavy handed American. Immediately fingering the secret husband victim’s daughter as the man responsible for the bombing, Vargas suspects that Quinlan is only pointing guilt at the man because, he too, is Mexican. However, suspicion becomes obsession when Vargas becomes convinced that Quinlan has planted evidence in order to fast track the arrest and thus a battle of wills ensues that pits the vastly different morals of both men against one another.
But while Vargas zips back an forth across the border to try and convince the DA that Quinlan is dirtier than the sleazy border towns that straddle the various countries, poor old Susie has to cool her heels at a motel. But in order to counteract Vargas’ snooping into his affairs, the unscrupulous Quinlan elects to form a shaky union with Joe Grandi, the acting head of a local crime family, who has beef with Vargas due to the recent dents he’s made in their organisation thanks to his arrest of their former boss. It’s now a race to see who can smear the other’s reputation first, but while Vargas opts to go the lawful route, Quinlan and Grandi cook up an underhanded plan to use their opponent’s wife in a plan to discredit him once and for all.
So, I suppose first we’d better tackle the elephant in the room – no, not Welles, they’ll be no fat jokes here thank you very much – and deal with the sight of Charlton Heston in make up and a pencil moustache as he plays Miguel Vargas. It’s quite a bizarre sight to see, especially considering that the story at it’s core paints bigotry in a refreshingly bad light in the late 50s, but while the actor mercifully doesn’t try for the accent, his attempts at Spanish come across less like a native countryman and more like a middle-aged man on holiday in Spain who has a working knowledge of the lingo. If this proves to be a deal breaker for you I’d understand, but then you’d be missing out on one of the very best criminal Noirs you’re ever likely to see – because in the midst of this breathless, sweaty thriller are frequent acts of purest genius.
Obviously much has been made of that opening, unbroken, single shot that sees a bomb planted in a car and then has the camera tail the vehicle for a couple blocks while also introducing Vargas and his wife before the passengers reach their fiery destination. It’s still a remarkable achievement now, let alone one pulled off in 1958 and it cements Orson Welles the director as still every bit the technical wizard he was when he made Citizen Kane in 1941. But beyond that opening shot that would go on to be idolised by virtually everyone you could think of, Welles embraces the pulp of the material and turns in a salacious thriller that’s every bit as exciting and unpredictable as it is seedy. Everything within the story seems to be in perpetual motion as Vargas’ crusade for justice has him zipping all over the place while Janet Leigh’s Suzie gets caught up in a conspiracy that teaches her to stay away from motels two whole years before she visited the Bates Motel in Psycho.
Likewise, the struggle of methodologies between the hero and villain causes the immense bulk of Quinlan to sweat more than usual as he’s forced to think on his feet (or foot, if we’re being accurate) to counteract the accusations from his Mexican nemesis. What with the leads, their fellow officers, members of the DA’s office and Grandi’s leather jacketed thugs all criss-crossing about, trying to outsmart each other, the opening crime of the bombing fascinatingly gets trampled in the rush as the stakes get much higher than an exploding car and a double murder.
But even more gripping are the characters in play and how they come to define each other in their battle for their respective ideas of justice. Yes, Vargas is played by the decidedly non-Mexican Heston, but it’s still worth noting that the character is intelligent, stylish, honest and has a white wife – all the things that would trigger Quinlan’s very obvious, racist tendencies, however it’s with Orson Welles’ monstrous, bloated villain that Touch Of Evil finds its most compelling jewel. Yes, Welles could have written and portrayed Quinlan as just a one-note heavy, but throughout the film we get little nuggets of backstory that reveal just how the character became a perspiring scumbag who plants evidence, is openly racist and who resorts to murder in order to destroy the name of his opponent by framing his wife as a junkie. And yet there’s moment of pathos too; we discover that his wife was murdered by an unknown assailant many years ago, which lead the the subsequent drinking and corruption. He visits Marline Dietrich’s chilli-obsessed whore whom he used to frequent in his younger days to make some sort of sad reconnection and the stress of thwarting Vargas and getting into bed with Grandi causes him to fall off the wagon after twelve years. Never has such an obviously odious antagonist been so pitiable and his final stand amid the squalid detritus of a polluted river proves to be the perfect place for such a sad, cesspool of a man to finally taste actual justice.
Drenched in neon, caked in sleaze and utterly unpredictable as its players hurl themselves back and forth across the border to catch each other out, Touch Of Evil leans into it’s grotty tone to elevate the dime-store thrills into high art. Dispensing with the opening crime to focus on the battle of good and evil between it’s two opposing forces, the final twist where the actual bomber is revealed is understated and yet utterly devestating. Fast, exciting and deeply profound, not even some iffy casting can dilute Welles at full strength as both a director and corpulent malefactor.
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