WHAT: Touch of Evil (1958, 4K restoration, reconstructed version)
WHEN: September 17, 2025 1 PM & 7 PM
WHERE: Pickwick Theatre, Park Ridge, IL
WHAT ELSE: Pre-show music by organist Jake McDonagh at 6:30 PM; October preview
HOW MUCH: $12/$10 advance or $10 for the 1 PM matinee
Advance Tickets: Click Here! and select date and time (7 PM).
“A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.” ~Vargas (Charlton Heston) to Quinlan (Orson Welles)
The Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series will open its twelfth season on September 17, 2025, with a screening of Touch of Evil (1958), directed by Orson Welles and starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Orson Welles. Recognized as one of the masterworks of cinema, Touch of Evil is also considered the last great film noir of the classic noir period. It followed a long tradition of dark films that went back to The Maltese Falcon (1941). Where the classic period begins and ends has been debated, but what can’t be argued is the overall value of this later work. It was Orson Welles’ Hollywood comeback after his self-imposed exile working in Europe. The result, though altered by the studio and later “restored” to Welles’ wishes, remains a must-see film made by one of the few geniuses of American cinema. It is a film containing irony, black humor, and a layered excursion into human idealism and morality.
My own introduction to Touch of Evil came in the mid-1990s through a Film Noir class taught by Scott Marks at Columbia College Chicago. This was a few years before the reconstructed version was even released. During one week, students were shown the opening scene. (The movie was later screened in its entirety outside the core syllabus.) The film begins with one of the most famous tracking shots in which a time bomb is loaded into a convertible. The audience, itself now complicit with this knowledge, then charts the slow progress of the car as it drives through the crowded streets of a border town. This crane shot is also able to introduce us to the main characters, Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his wife, Susie (Janet Leigh). The sequence is all accomplished in one take (lasting three and a half minutes) and only ends with a cut to the car exploding. Some time after this film course, I saw the film at the LaSalle Bank Theatre revival house in Chicago. A few years before I took over the programming there, I was able to experience a 16mm print of the film, which at the time was the original, 93-minute theatrical version. As with so many other film buffs, it made a tremendous impact and helped me understand why Orson Welles remains so important in the study of film.
Janet Leigh (nursing a broken left arm during production) and Charlton Heston
The story was based on a rather conventional pulp novel, Badge of Evil (1956), by Whit Masterson. (This was an alias for writers Robert Wade and H. Bill Miller.) Edward Muhl, the head of Universal Studios, purchased the property for B-movie producer Albert Zugsmith. Screenwriter Paul Monash was assigned the adaptation. The studio then cast Charlton Heston to play the lead. However, they didn’t have a director in place yet. According to Heston’s own account, when he found out that Orson Welles was going to act in the picture, he suggested that Welles also direct it. Welles was in fact offered the assignment and accepted only if he could re-write the story and cast the film to his liking. Welles rewrote the story in 17 days and cast some of his long-time friends, including Joseph Cotten (in an uncredited bit as a coroner), Joseph Calleia, Ray Collins and Marlene Dietrich.
An assassination on the American-Mexican border gets the attention of narcotics officer Vargas (Charlton Heston), who happens to be on the scene with his wife, Susie (Janet Leigh). Being American jurisdiction, however, Capt. Hank Quinlan is called in to investigate the crime scene, but Vargas suspects it’s not an open and shut case, as Quinlan believes. The captain later plants evidence on the man he believes committed the crime, but Vargas is determined to expose Quinlan even though his wife is in danger. Unbeknownst to Vargas, Susie becomes a pawn in a blackmail scheme orchestrated by Quinlan and Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), a crime boss whose family has been threatened by Vargas’ investigations.
The story becomes a battle of wills between two men representing opposing views of the law, but ultimately, it’s a story about the downfall of Hank Quinlan. The captain, a police “celebrity” of sorts, is a figure who is supposed to represent law and order, but he’s a corrupt official who abuses his power and values intuition over due process. He is willing to work around the law in order to do what he thinks is right. Murder and cover-up are tools of his trade. Never mind that he framed a man who ultimately proves to be guilty anyway. There is an undercurrent of racism that guides his actions– here, towards the Mexicans. He has his stalwart followers, men like police sergeant Menzies (Joseph Calleia), who fail to see Hank’s shortcomings. Quinlan is the man that the town of Los Robles probably deserves, since the town itself seethes with a racial tension and corruption. This is Noir Town, and Quinlan is the embodiment of all that is wrong with this part of the American landscape.
Orson Welles disappears into the role. Though not completely unrecognizable, he is nonetheless a far cry from the charismatic actor audiences had been accustomed to seeing on the screen. Even his great voice has been reduced to grumblings. It is not the typical role for Welles, but Touch of Evil is not the typical thriller. What is recognizable are Welles’ stylistics as a filmmaker and his sense of cinema, which include his use of long takes– notably the opening, although there is a more complex example later in the apartment interrogation scene– a moving camera, deep focus photography in a complex frame, low lighting, and low and sharp-angled shots that give the film a baroque and sometimes expressionistic feel. Throughout the film, Welles incorporated methods of independent cinema, which was unusual in a Hollywood film of that period. For instance, a Hollywood product might’ve been shot in a studio in front of a rear-screen projector. But here, Welles mounted his camera in front of a moving car and shot on location.
On the Pickwick Theatre’s MEGA-screen…
The film is set in the fictional town of “Los Robles.” Welles had originally wanted to shoot in an actual border town. However, he was able to find what he was looking for in the run-down corners of Venice, California. The exteriors so impressed him, particularly the oil derricks at night, that he worked the environment into the climax of his film. To amplify the atmosphere of this setting, Welles incorporated evocative music. Composer Henry Mancini created a Latin-inflected beat that emanates from within this world.
Russell Metty was the cameraman and had worked with Welles previously during the production of The Stranger (1946), which was actually Welles’ most profitable Hollywood film. Metty also had a connection to Citizen Kane (1941), having shot the film’s unique trailer. Metty’s career ranged from B movies like Cult of the Cobra (1955) to epics like Spartacus (1960) for Stanley Kubrick. But some of his finest work came during his association with director Douglas Sirk during the 1950s. Metty’s contributions on Touch of Evil help align it visually with its bleak, almost existential worldview. Empathy may be in short supply in Touch of Evil, and the settings– and the manner in which they are realized on screen– convey that sentiment photographically .
As visually dynamic as the film is, audiences remember the fine performances throughout. Besides Welles, there is screen legend Charlton Heston as Vargas. Usually moviegoers do a double-take when they hear that Heston is playing a Mexican in this film. But those who think that only a Mexican actor should’ve played the role do not understand the concept of box office or how studios operated back then. Good actors like a Pedro Armendariz or a Gilbert Roland simply wouldn’t have guaranteed success with audiences the way Heston did. He had recently skyrocketed to greater fame with his success as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956).
To Heston’s credit, he doesn’t attempt a Spanish accent. Far from stereotypical, Heston is the hero who believes the law should be followed. Ironically, in his all-consuming need to adhere to that principle, he’s willing to do anything for a conviction, such as putting a wire on Menzies for the film’s climax. Vargas wants to protect the system at all costs. But in his desire to not let anything get in his way, he is blinded and unintentionally puts his wife in jeopardy. Janet Leigh gets dropped off at a desert motel for her own protection and meets the nutty night man played by Dennis Weaver. These days, some might call him neurodiverse, but it’s certainly one of the most bizarre characterizations you will find in a Welles film. Janet Leigh never did have much luck at motels, but the night man is the least of her concerns as she is soon threatened by a gang that suggests it will do some very disturbing things to her. The gang, of course, is connected with the Grandi family, who is being investigated by Vargas.
The excellent supporting cast includes the aforementioned Joseph Calleia as Quinlan’s lapdog follower, Akim Tamiroff as Uncle Joe Grandi, and Marlene Dietrich as Tanya. The latter was one of the most glamorous of stars a generation before. Here, she is playing a worn-down owner of a brothel who knew Quinlan some years back. Dietrich was at her best when her acting abilities were channeled into shorter moments. She gives one of the best performances in the film and delivers the final line, which in many ways serves as the point of the film, or at least the coda on the life of Hank Quinlan.
Director Orson Welles on set. Touch of Evil was his first Hollywood film since MacBeth (1948).
As with previous Welles pictures, most famously The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil ran into trouble with the studio, which eventually took the film away from him. This maneuver has been detailed in many biographies of Orson Welles– one of the best being Citizen Welles (1989) by Frank Brady– but in short, the studio grew nervous when they got a look at a rough cut of the film in late July 1957. Universal was particularly alarmed by the film’s off-balance editing, which cut back and forth with parallel storylines. They asked Welles to work on this aspect, but instead, he hurt his own cause by not even being present. He then delayed his response to studio demands. Welles simply didn’t know how to deal with studio people. Ultimately, they re-edited the film themselves– banning Welles from the editing room– and shot four additional scenes (with director Harry Keller) to give it more of a narrative logic. These additions were minimal and do not compromise the work Welles had already done on the picture.
After seeing a preview of the film, Welles composed a 58-page memo to the studio requesting changes. Some of which were followed, others were not. Decades later, the Welles memo was published in Film Quarterly by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. It served as the inspiration for a new version of the film based on the details Welles had outlined. In 1998, producer Rick Schmidlin and film editor Walter Murch crafted a re-edit guided by the memo. This was not a “director’s cut” as Welles had passed away in 1985, but it was a revised version that approximated his wishes.
In this new incarnation, there are significant changes in the editing, but one of the definite improvements is the opening sequence. In the theatrical version, the film’s titles play over the scene, which distracts the viewer’s attention away from the masterful crane shot. In the new version, audiences can simply concentrate on the flow of the action without reading the names on the screen. It’s debatable which version is better from beginning to end– some critics prefer the tighter construction of the theatrical version while others would rather see the film as Welles had imagined it. Either way, the film is remarkable no matter which version of it is presented. A third version– a 103 minute “preview” cut discovered in 1976– also exists on the blu-ray release.
Though the original version of Touch of Evil was a box office failure that played on the lower half of a double bill, it became a major influence on the French New Wave. In fact, the film’s greatest recognition came from abroad. It was films like this that made the French critics take note of the dark cinema that was coming out of Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. Over the course of time, as film noir became defined and embraced, Touch of Evil was recognized as one of the touchstones of the style. Screenwriter Paul Schrader even called it the “epitaph” for film noir. Everything that came after it would simply be classified as “neo-noir.” Ironically, Welles himself viewed the film as a melodrama! Regardless of how the film is categorized, it remains one of the great works of American cinema and one of the must-see films of our new season at the Pickwick Theatre.
We live in a society now where ideology trumps humanity and loyalties get in the way of empathy. In this regard, Touch of Evil (and the fate of Hank Quinlan) may be the most relevant film you could possibly see at the theatre.
~MCH
A screen comparison at the Pickwick Theatre: 1958 vs. 2025
Touch of Evil plays in Chicago on a double bill with The Female Animal!
