From: FAC_JCLARK@JMUVAX.BITNET
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
Subject: Re: Touch of Evil: Complete uncut restored version
Date: 16 Oct 92 19:59:12 GMT
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Rick,

You'll get a response from me on Touch of Evil and translation therein, but
I ain't touchin' the rest of that issue...

There's a pretty good account of the making of Touch in Frank Brady's biog
of Welles, "Citizen Welles."  Yes, old Orson disclaimed the film in his (half-
hearted?) way, but it's generally acknowledged a masterpiece.  (More on that,
last paragraph below.)  The current version from MCA Home Video, which I think
must be what you're referring to, is a "completer" version than the one Univer-
sal first released.  But it includes footage shot by another director, whose
name I've forgotten (Harry Keller, I think; but it's in Brady's book).  Appar-
ently though compromised, the overall re-editing of the film is more intelli-
gible and close in spirit to the essence of Welles (whatever that is, if he
insists on claiming he only kept his hands on three films all the way through
his career), than it was before the re-editing and additions.

As for the novel, it *was* by a Whit Masterson, whether or not that's a
psuedonym.  Welles opinion was sort of that the book was hopeless melodramatic
junk, so he re-wrote the script.  And apparently his involvement in that capacit
   y and as director was due to a misunderstanding, in which Charlton Heston sai
   d
he'd commit to the project if Welles was making the film.  Producer Albert
Zugsmith had only intended the big W to act in the thing, but he was sort of
stuck if he wanted Heston.  So...

In my book, this film is a masterpiece and (pace Ellen Edgerton) one of my all
time favorites.  When I was in film school, I think I sat through it one after-
noon 2-3 times at the Bleecker Street Cinema in Manhattan; now I've got a
splendid disc transfer of the MCA version.  This is one case of translation
where the original, a throwaway genre novel, was practically begging to be
superceded by something better.  In the scheme of things, the novel would no
longer be remember, probably, except that it's now the basis of Welles' more
complexly themed good-and-evil high melodrama.

Touch has that famous 3-and-a-half minute opening tracking shot, which Scorcese
homaged in Goodfellas and Altman in The Player.  I understand that Altman,
however, thinks it meretricious.  I don't.  I think it's a wonderfully nervous
opening to the film, and slyly metaphorical.  It starts out: closeup of hand
setting timer on a homemade bomb, depositing it in trunk of a car.  Then
camera pulls back as couple get in the car and it tracks them through and
across streets of a Mexican border town, with people crossing the car's path
foreground and background, including the leads (Chuck and Janet Leigh).  The
first cut comes as the car explodes offscreen: cut to the explosion. This
structure actually mirrors the *idea* of a bomb... but, apart from the camera's
drifting and waiting with the car as the timer winds down, another sort of
bomb--one with a fuse.  The long track is the fuse; when it burns out, the bomb
explodes--and that's the first cut to the actual exploding car.  Nifty.

One other thing: This was Henry Mancini's first major music scoring assignment.
He had little contact with Welles, except for talking in generalities about the
score, but apparently Welles like the results. Welles' idea was to use almost
exclusively "source music" in the score: music coming from radios, jukeboxes in
the locations where the story took place.  The score is about 80% that way,
perhaps the most notable early example of this practice.

Jeff Clark
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU