A car bomb that travels across the US-Mexico border is the catalyst that brings Charlton Heston's honest Mexican cop up against the bloated, unshaven spectre of director Orson Welles' corrupt detective in this classic drama. Ticking all the boxes of your quintessential film noir, Touch of Evil presents a menacing, ambiguous world, where there are no easy choices.
This is one of the many films after Citizen Kane for which Welles famously wrestled unsuccessfully for creative control, but it still shows off his skills for snappy dialogue and moody direction. There's the expert use of deep focus, shadows, reflections, and low camera angles - and also, this time, a number of deft tracking shots - not least the audacious opening shot, which follows the fateful car bomb and weaves in and out of characters' lives.
2 comments:
I love the sillhouette of him running down the street...
I'm so glad you do these film reviews. I always Netflix them. :-)
The captcha is "cating." :-D
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