Touch of Evil

 Year:  1958

Director:  Orson Welles

Screenplay:  Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson

Starring:  Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Crime, thriller, film noir

In an unnamed town on the Mexican-U.S. border, a wealthy American businessman and his girlfriend are killed by a bomb planted in the car.  Upstanding Mexican cop Miguel Vargas (Heston) and his new bride, Susie (Leigh), witness the explosion and cut short their honeymoon while Vargas becomes drawn into the investigation, coming up against powerful, corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles).

This is one of the best, as well as one of the last, of the classic film noir.  The term film noir was coined by French film critics to describe a run of stylish American thrillers and crime dramas that featured bleak, cynical and often nihilistic attitudes, and which flourished in the 1940s and '50s.  Based on the 1956 novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, this is a surprisingly dark thriller, with it's striking visuals, including run-down locations, off-kilter camera angles, extreme close-ups, grotesque characters, and stark, black and white photography, the film has a genuinely nightmarish feel.  The main flaw is its racially insensitive casting, with white actors, such as Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich, cast as Mexican characters.  Although it is worth pointing out that the Mexican Vargas (albeit played by Heston) is the noble hero, while the white American Quinlan is the chief antagonist.  In the character of Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles creates one of the screen's most memorable monsters.  A racist, corrupt cop who plants evidence to frame suspects, and has all the powerful people in the town in his pocket, and who seem to orbit him like satellites around a planet.  The ageing, gargantuan Quinlan, an alcoholic, who constantly eats candy bars, and walks with a cane, he seems almost to be falling apart in front of our eyes, and yet there are flickers of the tattered remnants of nobility in his small, narrow eyes, and in his relationship with ex-lover Tana (Marlene Dietrich under very heavy makeup), who appears to be the only person who really knows and cares about him, there is a kind of tenderness, making him more damaged than truly evil.  A miscast Charlton Heston (who looks kind of like a young Sean Connery here) is okay, and Janet Leigh is good as Vargas' new wife, Susie, even if she doesn't have much to do.  The scene where she is attacked in a remote motel almost foreshadows her most famous role in Psycho (1962).  The film was taken away from Welles and re-edited by the studio without his approval.  For example, in Welles' version there are no opening credits, and the film opens with a famous sequence where a ticking time bomb is placed in the boot of a car.  An unsuspecting couple get in the car and drive off.  We follow the car through the streets, there is no score, instead we hear street sounds:  Music spilling from bars and restaurants, police whistles, car noises, muffled conversations, and then the car explodes.  In the release version, the credits are splashed over Welles' carefully composed shots, and the street sounds replaced by loud, brassy music.  A furious Welles penned a 58 page memo outlining his vision for the film.  In 1998, the film was restored and re-edited according to Welles' instructions.  Now it can be seen for the masterpiece it is.

Orson Welles, Victor Millan, Joseph Calleia and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil

Casino Royale

 Year of Release:  1967

Director:  John Huston, Ken Hughes, Robert Parrish, Joe McGrath, Val Guest

Screenplay:  Wolf Mankowitz, John Law, Michael Sayers, based on the novel Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Starring:  David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Address, Joanna Pettet, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr

Running Time:  131 minutes

Genre:  Comedy

Legendary British spy, Sir James Bond (Niven), is dragged out of retirement when British spies begin being systematically eliminated by SMERSH.

This sprawling, self-indulgent mess of a film has no less than five credited directors.  Whereas Ian Fleming's source novel, which first introduced the British super-spy James Bond to the world,  was a taut thriller, the adaptation is barely comprehensible and has only the most passing occasional similarity to the novel.  This is a huge big budget film with an all-star cast, including Hollywood names such as William Holden, George Raft and Charles Boyer, British comedians Ronnie Corbett, Chic Murray and Bernard Cribbins, French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo, and uncredited appearances from Peter O'Toole and racing driver Stirling Moss.  By the late 1960s, the Bond films were moving further away from Fleming's novels and introducing more comic elements, although they wouldn't become full self-parody until the Roger Moore films of the 1970s.  However this film spoofs Bond mercilessly, everything being played for broad comedy.  It looks like several different films shoved together, and it is a complete mess, at times it looks good, particularly the German expressionist design  of the Berlin spy school, at other times it looks really shoddy.  It manages to shove in UFOs, Frankenstein's monster, cowboys, and a sequence in Heaven among other things.  The climax is a complete mess.  David Niven, who in fact was Fleming's own choice to play Bond, provides some class to proceedings.  Peter Sellers is mostly quite good as the gambler posing as Bond, although he does occasionally fall back on his vaguely offensive funny accent routines.  Woody Allen is Woody Allen, enough said.  Orson Welles just about keeps his dignity as Le Chiffre, the gambler who bankrolls SMERSH.  Ursula Address, the original Bond girl from Dr. No (1962), seems to be having fun as the sinister spy who seduces Sellers.  The film introduces the idea of James Bond, and the 007 number being a code, and hints that the James Bond in the official series is a separate person using the same code name and number, and it does have some gags at the expense of the official Bond films (Sir James:  "Since when did secret agent become synonymous with sex maniac?  Speaking of which, how is my namesake?"). This film does feature about six different James Bonds (maybe something for Eon to consider, since it seems that everyone with an Equity card seems to be named, or has been named, as a possible Bond.  Or maybe it's best not to give them ideas).  Perhaps the best thing about the film is the music written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and performed by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Dusty Springfield who sings "The Look of Love", which became a big hit.  I did laugh during the film, but it was kind of a laugh of disbelief, because I kept thinking that it was not going to get any more ridiculous or nonsensical, and yet it always did.  This is very much a product of it's time, and to put it mildly, it has aged very badly, and some elements are quite roblematic, so be warned.

A far more faithful adaptation of Casino Royale was released in 2006 starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green and Mads Mikkelsen.  Whatever you do, don't get the two films confused!

David Niven as Sir James Bond and Barbara Bouchet as Miss Moneypenny in Casino Royale

The Magnificent Ambersons

Year of Release:  1942
Director:  Orson Welles
Screenplay:  Orson Welles, based on the novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Starring:  Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett
Running Time:  88 minutes (cut from 148 minutes)
Genre:  Period drama

The Ambersons are an old, vastly wealthy Midwestern family at the turn of the 20th Century.  However they face a change in fortune as the proud and willful son of the family, George (Holt), refuses to allow his widowed mother (Costello) to reunite with Eugene Morgan (Cotten), who she was involved with before George's father came along, and has remained her one true love.  Meanwhile the world around them is changing due to increasingly industrialisation, particularly the growing influence of the motorcar, and George refuses to move with the times.

This was Orson Welles' follow-up to Citizen Kane (1941).  The film was controversially re-edited by the studio who felt it was too long and depressing, so they cut it by an hour and substituted a more upbeat ending.  While this was going on Welles was in Brazil working on another film.  We are unlikely ever to see a Welles cut of the film, because the original negatives of the cut footage were destroyed, although Welles detailed notes for the film survive.  The composer, Bernard Herrmann, was so incensed by his score being cut by an hour that he demanded his name be removed from the film.  While we don't have the Welles Ambersons what we do have is a powerful and impressive film.  It's stylish and visually striking, and there are some fantastic performances from Welles' Mercury Theater company.  The opening sequences are masterful creating a surprisingly humorous elegy for a forgotten world.  It is a film about the dangers of overweening pride as well as the perils of refusing to move ahead with the times.  There are a very few places where it shows signs of heavy cutting, and the ending looks very obviously tacked on (which it was, of course) and doesn't work with the feel of the film.  While it is no Citizen Kane, there is still brilliance here and it has it's own flawed magnificence.

Anne Baxter and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons

Citizen Kane

Year of Release:  1941
Director:  Orson Welles
Screenplay:  Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles
Starring:  Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, Ruth Warwick, Erskine Sanford, William Alland
Running Time:  117 minutes
Genre:  Drama

Following the death of controversial tycoon, Charles Foster Kane (Welles), one of the richest and most famous men in America, newsreel reporter Thompson (Alland) is sent to get a fresh angle on Kane's life by investigating the meaning of his last word, "Rosebud."  As he interviews those who knew and worked with Kane, Thompson builds a picture of his life from his poor childhood in rural Colorado, to his foundation of a huge newspaper empire, to his political ambitions, and troubled private life.

This was the first film of legendary actor, writer, producer and director Orson Welles, who had already made a splash with his Mercury Theater company, and his notorious radio production of The War of the Worlds.  It was a very experimental film for the time, with it's non-linear structure, unconventional camera angles, and pseudo-documentary sequences.  Famously it often tops polls as the best film ever made, while I am not sure if it is or not, it is a personal favourite of mine, and it is certainly a great film.  It offers much, but reveals little.  The great writer Jorge Luis Borges described Citizen Kane as "a labyrinth without a centre", and it is an entrancing puzzle.  It's mysteries, even when revealed, seem to lead to yet more mysteries.  Ultimately we end where we begin, outside, the forbidding gates of Xanadu.  The film is a technical marvel, and full of images that have become iconic.  The complex, literate script is beautifully written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and the performances are very impressive all round.  The film pretty much disappeared on release, thanks in no small part to real-life newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who was enraged by the film, believing that Welles was having a go at him, and he tried to ensure the film was buried.  Fortunately Hearst failed, and this dazzling film could be reappraised as the masterpiece it is.

Orson Welles as Citizen Kane

The Third Man

Year of Release:  1949
Director:  Carol Reed
Screenplay:  Graham Greene
Starring:  Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli (as Valli), Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

In war ravaged, Allied-occupied Vienna, Austria, in the years immediately after the Second World War, racketeering thrives.  Holly Martins (Cotton), an American writer of pulp Westerns, now fallen on hard times, arrives in Vienna because his friend, Harry Lime (Welles), has offered him a job.  However, no sooner has he arrived, than he learns that Lime has been killed in a traffic accident.  With the help of Lime's girlfriend, Anna (Valli), Martins investigates his death, but becomes suspicious that it may not have been an accident.  To his horror, he learns from a British major (Howard), that Lime was a callous, murderous racketeer.

This British movie is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.  It is a suspenseful, dark thriller.  Filmed in crisp black-and-white in an almost expressionistic style with harsh light and deep, inky black shadows, and shots frequently photographed in a distorted  "Dutch angle" style, and boasting a literate, witty and intelligent script from acclaimed novelist Graham Greene, with memorable performances.  Cotton is memorable as the alcoholic novelist torn between loyalty and conscience, and Valli as the mysterious, tormented Anna.  There is also of course Orson Welles, who despite not appearing much in the film is gifted with one of the most memorable introductions to a character in the history of cinema, and two memorable speeches.  The film's ear-worm theme music by Anton Karas performed entirely on the zither became an international hit, and spent eleven weeks at the top of the US charts.  From the cynical, opening narration (spoken by an uncredited Carol Reed) which introduces the situation in Vienna at the time of the film, to the final chase through the sewers, this depicts a bleak, fallen world of betrayal, and quick violent death with little to provide light or hope.   

"You know what the fellow said, in Italy under the Borgias, they had warfare, murder, terror and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace.  And what did that produce?  The cuckoo clock."
 -Harry Lime (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles in The Third Man