Fireworks From Start to Finish

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2013)

There's some wonderful acting in Welles' "Touch of Evil" (1958), especially between Heston and Welles. There the characters don't duly wait for space to say their lines, they're impatient, try to cut into the conversation and steal that moment or two in the flow of conversation they know they won't be granted otherwise.
In this film Lumet goes as far one can go in this respect. The characters are no longer characterizations, they're real people, interacting with passion, conscious of their space not only in the room but in the conversational dimension, just like we are in real life.
The cinematography corresponds to this intimacy. The air is full of emotion, presence. I often consider Dreyer's "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" (1928) as the ultimate close-up, but it might as well be this one. I have never felt having been transported to a place with such frenetic control, oxymoronically speaking. This is fireworks from start to finish. Then again, the cinematographer is one of the great masters of cinema. Consider that this is the man who shot all those amazing interiors in Vigo's "L'Atalante" (1934), it's not entirely shocking that there's so many visually preternatural things transpiring.
Moreover, here one may find the crème de la crème of any version of Sherlock Holmes ever made, a whodunit in which logic is overturned by logic, emotion by emotion, recollection by clarity. A wonderfully executed study of thought guided by prejudice and assumption and of thought guided by passion for lucidity.
The Region A Blu-ray released by the Criterion Collection is great not only for having impeccable image quality but also for the brilliant extra material.