This past April saw the death of Charlton Heston, as noted here and here, among other diaries, on DK. It so happens that one of his most celebrated, and at the time under-appreciated, films is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, in fact this month (but not in quite the intended version, of which more anon). The film is Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, with Heston as law enforcement agent Mike Vargas and Welles as the corrupt local sheriff Hank Quinlan. So now seems a fitting time to remember it. With that.....
I remember Touch of Evil being standard Saturday night fare as a kid on the local PBS station. I can't remember now if the 93-minute or the 108-minute version was more prevalent. What I can remember was years later, seeing Leslie Megahey's documentary on Orson Welles, Stories from a Life in Film, on TNT cable, where Heston gave his take on how Welles got to direct the movie (documentary clip available here):
"....I said, 'who's going to direct it?'. They said, "we haven't picked a director yet. We have Orson Welles to do the heavy, though.' This was on the long-distance phone. After a static-filled pause, I said: 'why don't you have him direct it? He's a pretty good director, you know.' And the reaction at first was a prolonged silence, as though I had suggested that my mother direct the film. And after a while, they said, 'yeah, that's right. We'll....we'll get back to you."
The movie then cut immediately to Welles:
"So they quickly called me back again and said 'will you direct this picture? We can't pay you any more.' I said 'I'll direct it, but if I also get to write it, every word of it, an entirely new script.' They said yes."
This was Welles' first chance to direct a US film since The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Universal Studios took the final control away from Welles and what went out to the public was an edited, 93-minute version. Many years later, footage was added to give a 108-minute version. While neither of those cuts reflects Welles' final wishes, his imagination and style still comes through, beyond the classic one-take opening shot.
One passage in the Megahey documentary from Heston (later on in the same clip above) struck me as odd at the time, when he casually said of Touch of Evil that it was "not a 'great' film", yet at the same time, he expressed no disdain for having worked on it, not at all. Given the general sense that I had of its reputation, plus the mere fact that it was an Orson Welles movie, I didn't really understand what Heston meant by that, thinking of it as something of a put-down. Yet I put the word "great" is in internal quotes, sensing intuitively, perhaps, a certain inflection in the choice of that word that maybe telegraphed the deeper meaning, even if I couldn't define it at the time.
Much later in life, I think I now understand what Heston meant: namely that the subject matter and dialogue weren't exactly on the level of Shakespeare, or Ben-Hur, or Citizen Kane, which they certainly aren't in Touch of Evil, far from it. Heston pointed out as much when he said the original, poorer script was a pretty routine cop thriller. In short, it was basically meant as a B-movie and nothing more. But Welles made much more of it than just another B-movie, of course. Charles Taylor has a nice article from Salon in 1998 that encapsulates this sense, where he described Touch of Evil as "a trash entertainment" that is quite possibly "the sleaziest good movie ever made".
The 1998 Taylor article was right around the time of the theatrical re-release of Touch of Evil, after the tremendous restoration work that the great Hollywood sound editor Walter Murch did on the movie, working with producer Rick Schmidlin, following the 58-page memo that Welles had dictated to Universal Studios detailing his thoughts on how he wanted the movie to look. Murch wrote about it in the NYT, but since the NYT archive hasn't put this article on their site, for some reason, I had to track down an alternate link here.
But since this is Loser's Club, something here has to touch on that. This relates, ironically enough, to Welles' daughter, Beatrice. Per Geoffrey Macnab from this 2003 article in The Guardian, Beatrice Welles filed a lawsuit against Universal Studios over Murch's restoration of Touch of Evil in May 1998:
"In May 1998, she threatened Universal with legal action over its restoration of Touch of Evil, thereby forcing the studio to cancel the long-planned Cannes premiere of the film that actress Janet Leigh had travelled to France to attend.....
"Few observers were able to work out precisely what she was complaining about when she challenged Universal over Touch of Evil, but the more noise she made, the more seriously she was taken.
"'Universal did not consult with her or obtain her consent prior to their unauthorised alteration of the film. The suit was subsequently commenced to protect her rights. Later the suit was settled,' her adviser Thomas A White explains by email. In other words, she was effectively fighting to protect the bowdlerised cut released by Universal in 1958 rather than the version put together by producer Rick Schmidlin and sound editor Walter Murch...."
On aesthetic grounds alone, legalisms aside, the lawsuit made no sense. One wonders, at times, if she made that much trouble simply because she could:
"'Studios, she learned from her experience on Touch of Evil, respect litigation,' points out Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic of the Chicago Reader and world-renowned Welles expert. 'She said that once she saw it she had no problems with the film at all, and she was very apologetic to Janet Leigh. But she none the less brought litigation against Universal Pictures and they made an out-of-court settlement'....
"Rosenbaum, a consultant on the re-edited version of Touch of Evil, remembers that Beatrice wasn't consulted because no one could see any reason why she should have been. The rights to the film were held by Universal, not her. However, her suit was taken very seriously by the studio: 'She was able to hold up the release of Touch of Evil on DVD for about a year!'"
Beatrice Welles, however, did do yeoman's work to get a restored version of her father's 1951 Othello released, which I, at least, give her credit for (I had not seen any earlier version, besides clips in Megahey's documentary), even if Rosenbaum's assessment is more mixed. I remember seeing Othello in a New York theater when the restored version was released.
Likewise, in 1998, when the restored Touch of Evil was re-released, I do remember hearing the trailer in the movie theater, where Heston had done the voice over. It seemed pretty evident that he was proud to see and to promote the release of that version (OK, sure, it was his job as an actor to promote it). Maybe that's another small part of what he meant initially about "not a 'great' film", that before then, the film did not reflect Welles' desired vision. Murch's article indicated that Welles himself had "distanced himself from the film" after conflicts with the studio, which backfired on him and led to that 58-page memo. But with the restoration, perhaps for Heston, that earlier qualification became water under the bridge.
Worth remembering, and using as a closer, was the assessment of Welles, the life-long and unashamed liberal (you have to go a little ways into that clip), for his political polar opposite, Heston, cited by Manhola Dargis in her tribute to Heston in the NYT: "the nicest man to work with that ever lived in movies". Sometimes, people on the opposite ends of the spectrum can work together.
OK, all that said, you know the SNLC ritual below. Loser stories of the week welcome; have at it....