Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Tanya: He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Susan: You know what's wrong with you, Mr Grandi? You've being seeing too many gangster movies.

Hell is Other Movies: Chimes at Midnight

This week we're playing Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, his last studio film.  Welles, of course had a legendarily messy filmmaking career, one that can be fairly divided between his studio films and his independent productions.  The studio films are the most famous, featuring also the consensus all-time #1 Citizen Kane, the butchered masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons and the too-twisted-for-Hollywood noirs The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil.  His independent films include this week's giveaway, the dishonest documentary F for Fake, the schizophrenic and multiform funhouse Kane Mr. Arkadin, an adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (which Welles rightly notes is a comedy) and three Shakespeare films: Macbeth, Othello and the greatest of them all, 1965's Chimes at Midnight, in which Welles combines parts of the two Henry IV plays with Henry V to tell one story about the fat, blustery rogue Sir John Falstaff.

His independent films are more famous for their technical shortcomings than anything else, made as they were with shoestring budgets (when there was any money at all) with post-recorded sound (occasionally in sync and often with Welles himself dubbing several parts), thrown together sets (Welles famously set a scene in Othello in a Turkish bath because the costumes for the scene weren't ready) and shooting schedules spanning years (Welles would take whatever acting jobs he could get to raise money for his films).  And unlike his studio films, due to complex rights issues his independent films are difficult to find in anything like their intended form.  The good people at the Criterion Collection have put out deluxe editions of both F for Fake and Mr. Arkadin, but the Shakespeare films have yet to reach DVD in this country in the shape Welles wanted.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Welles was the greatest interpreter of Shakespeare in the 20th Century.  While Laurence Olivier was filming Shakespeare like it was a museum, pinning it to the wall with perfect bloodless enunciation, Welles dragged the Bard down to his level, and made the plays come alive as the black, guttural and popular entertainments they really are, which brings their great heights and depths alive for an audience in a way Olivier could never manage.  The part of Falstaff was perfect for Welles, one of Shakespeare's greatest creations: a gluttonous, dishonest, ribald raconteur who befriends Prince Hal, soon to be King Henry V.  Welles had already played a reflection of Falstaff in Touch of Evil:  Hank Quinlan in that film is similarly larger than life, twisted by tragedy into evil, but tragic nonetheless.  Falstaff is never evil: cowardly, thieving and whoring perhaps, but never a villain.  He's the tragic hero of Chimes at Midnight, playing the bombastic fool with a real love for and pride in Hal, whose heart is broken when the young king turns him away after the coronation.  Welles captures all of Falstaff's complexity, the humanity that, to agree with Harold Bloom (a bit of a Falstaff himself, I think) makes him, along with Hamlet, one of the most original and important characters in all of literature.

The film is every bit a match for Welles's performance, hampered as it is by poor sound recording.  The centerpiece of the film is the Battle of Shrewsbury, where Henry IV and Hal put down a rebellion by Hal's rival Henry Percy (nicknamed Hotspur).  Falstaff is the comic figure in the battle, a heavily-armored balloon with little stick legs, running to and fro always a little behind the action.  The battle itself stands with the greatest scenes of medieval action ever filmed.  As viscerally immersive and violent as anything in Braveheart or Ran, but shot through with small moments of beauty colored by the bloody consequences of the chaotic violence.  The rest of the film is of a piece with the rest of Welles's career: dramatic shadows and beams of light, compositions in depth and canted angles conveying real meaning (expansion and diminishment, the twin poles  pulling the narrative and the characters apart) rather than purposeless showiness that infects so many of his imitators.

Chimes at Midnight was part of the first batch of VHS tapes I rented from Scarecrow Video when I moved to Seattle almost 13 years ago, but I hadn't been able to see it since then.  But freshly arrived in my mailbox today was a DVD version from the UK.  It's a poor transfer (might actually just be that old VHS version on disc), the image is often blurry in motion, the sound is at times inaudible (though that may be unfixable) and it isn't formatted for 16x9 televisions.  But for all its faults, the greatness of the film shines through.  Touch of Evil is still my favorite Welles, but Chimes at Midnight is #2.

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Tanya: I didn't recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars.

Quinlan: It's either the candy or the hooch. I must say, I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on. Anyway, you're sure lookin' good.

Tanya: You're a mess, honey.

Top 5 Top 5 Lists Related To, But Not Including, Touch of Evil

Top 5 Charlton Heston Films:

1. Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)
2. The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)
3. Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1965)
4. Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993)
5. Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)

Top 5 Janet Leigh Films:

1. Psycho (Alred Hitchcock, 1960)
2. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
3. The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 953)
4. Holiday Affair (Don Hartman, 1949)
5. Words and Music (Norman Taurog, 1948)

Top 5 Marlene Dietrich Films:

1. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

2. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

3. Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952)

4. Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder,1957)

5. Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939)

Top 5 1950s Film Noirs:

1. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
2. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950)
3. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)
4. Murder By Contract (Irving Lerner, 1958)
5. The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)

Top 5 Films of 1958:

1. Vertigo
2. Mon Oncle
3. Ivan the Terrible Part 2
4. Some Came Running
5. Murder by Contract

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Vargas: A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me.

Tanya: You haven't got any.

Quinlan: Hmm? What do you mean?

Tanya: Your future's all used up.

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Vargas: Susie, one of the longest borders on earth is right here between your country and mine. An open border. Fourteen hundred miles without a single machine gun in place. Yeah, I suppose that all sounds very corny to you.

Susan: I could love being corny, if my husband would only cooperate.

Links: Touch of Evil

It's a little surprising to see that the New York Times, in the form of Howard Thompson raved about Touch of Evil back on its premiere in 1958, but only because the film has such a reputation as the film who's financial failure finally drove director Orson Welles out of Hollywood for good.  It's nice to see that even the gray lady was able to recognize its charms:

"Any other competent director might have culled a pretty good, well-acted melodrama from such material, with the suspense dwindling as justice begins to triumph (as happens here). Mr. Welles' is an obvious but brilliant bag of tricks. Using a superlative camera (manned by Russell Metty) like a black-snake whip, he lashes the action right into the spectator's eye."

Tom Charity has a nice overview of the film at Moving Image Source, including a timeline of the film's production, from the initial idea through all its various release versions.

"Touch of Evil was not the sort of thing that appealed to the tastes of the Academy, or indeed many of the critics, once they had paid to see it.

"The flashy interplay of queer character defeats itself in the end. Far from clear speech and pretentious lighting and photographic effects add to the confusion….Utterly incoherent and unpleasantly smelling of evil, the film will give most men, let alone women, the willies," warned the reviewer at Kine Weekly. In Reporter, Gerald Weales said it was “often laughably bad…pure Orson Welles and impure balderdash.”

Such reviews seem bizarre in light of the film’s critical rehabilitation over the years—championed by the Cahiers crowd, it developed a cult following over the 1960s and ranked 15th in the 2002 Sight & Sound critics’ poll after its reemergence in a re-edited version in 1998."

Next we have a long essay from critic Jonathan Rosenbaum on the nature of director's cuts, including his own work on the restored version of Touch of Evil:

"Commodification of artworks ultimately affects not only their definitions and catalog descriptions but also to some extent their distribution. As astonishing as this may sound, all original invitations from foreign film festivals to show the re-edited Touch of Evil were rejected by the woman in charge of foreign sales at Universal because, according to Rick Schmidlin, she was convinced that no one outside the United States had the least bit of interest in Orson Welles. Once she changed her mind, the film was of course shown all over the world, but arriving at this stage took some time."

Welles's original 58 page memo to Universal Studios, describing his preferred changes to their cut of his film, which formed the basis for the version we're showing this week, is available at Wellesnet, along with some background info on the film.

"I assume that the music now backing the opening sequence of the picture is temporary...

As the camera roves through the streets of the Mexican bordertown, the plan was to feature a succession of different and contrasting Latin American musical numbers - the effect, that is, of our passing one cabaret orchestra after another. In honky-tonk districts on the border, loudspeakers are over the entrance of every joint, large or small, each blasting out it's own tune by way of a "come-on" or "pitch" for the tourists. The fact that the streets are invariably loud with this music was planned as a basic device throughout the entire picture. The special use of contrasting "mambo-type" rhythm numbers with rock 'n' roll will be developed in some detail at the end of this memo, when I'll take up details of the "beat" and also specifics of musical color and instrumentation on a scene-by-scene and transition-by-transition basis."

Touch of Evil Quote of the Day

Vargas: I'm merely what the United Nations would call an observer.

Quinlan: You don't talk like one, I'll say that for you.  Mexican, I mean.

Coming Attractions: Touch of Evil

Wednesday, 16 March at 6:45 & 9:10 P.M.

Giveaways: DVD courtesy of Scarecrow Video, and a gift certificate to Cinema Books, respectively.

Es muy bueno.

"There is a man, a certain man..."

Jack White is a man of prodigious talent. He is a uniquely gifted songwriter, an amazingly skilled guitarist and, as was recently discovered, a kick-ass drummer. In his many bands, particularly the White Stripes, White manages to craft simple, catchy, quirky and deeply personal songs that continually succeed in an increasingly fractured music world. He is easily the greatest and most universally respected rock star to come down the pipeline in over a decade.

Looking beyond the wide range of the above-mentioned qualities, Mr. White's greatest gift is his impeccable good taste. His knowledge and admiration for the blues has served his songwriting well throughout his career, his unflinching devotion to analog equipment makes his recordings stand out amongst the glut, and most importantly his heroes are by and large visionary artists who pushed the envelope of their given field while maintaining a deep respect for the past. No man is more influential on the work of Jack White than Orson Welles.

The evidence is incontrovertible. The White Stripes song "The Union Forever", off of the album White Blood Cells, takes its entire lyric from lines from Welles's screenplay for Citizen Kane, co-written with Herman J. Mankiewicz (screw you Pauline Kael!).

White's record label and recently-opened Nashville record store are both called Third Man, after the Carol Reed masterpiece starring Welles as the enigmatic Harry Lime.

The song "Take, Take, Take" on the White Stripes album Get Behind Me Satan, details the fictitious encounter a star-struck fan has with actress Rita Hayworth, Welles's wife of five years in the 40's. About a year after the album's release, White married model Karen Elson, a redhead like Rita.

It is difficult to say which of the myriad qualities Welles possessed affected Jack White the most. Could it be Welles's ability to juggle multiple functions on any given project, sometimes being the writer, star, director, producer and editor, much like the multiple roles White puts upon himself in the music world? Or perhaps how Welles, post-the Magnificent Ambersons debacle, managed to work wonders within the confines of a limited budget and a dearth of materials? What about the way Welles seemed a man from a different era, displaced in his own time?

Personally I think the idea Jack White took most to heart from Orson Welles was his embellishment on his own past. The lies Welles made up about his upbringing, his artistic career and personal life, influenced White's public persona and the perception he feeds his audience. After his father passed away, an underage Welles travelled to Europe. One day he found himself outside the door to the Gate Theatre in Dublin. He weaseled himself into an acting gig there by telling the manager that he was a Broadway star. This lie opened the door for his subsequent career, starting with his acclaim on the stage, which led to his creation of the Mercury Theatre, which produced the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast and made Welles famous.

It is obvious that Jack White learned a lesson from this. From the outset Jack insisted that he and White Stripes drummer extraordinaire Meg were brother and sister, instead of a divorced couple. When the truth came to light sometime later, White ignored it, maintaining the illusion he had created. He knew that the idea of a two-piece rock band comprised of siblings made for much better copy than the truth. As with another hero, Bob Dylan, White acts as a man from a bygone era, a blues-man from the crossroads, a drifter and a loner, instead of a blue-collar carpenter from Detroit.

In perpetuating blatant falsehoods about who they were Orson Welles and Jack White managed to create much more than impeccable artistic bodies of work; they created themselves.