Review of Touch of Evil (1958) by Veronique K — 07 Apr 2008

Orson welles' "touch of evil" is dubbed as the last classic film noir...as a matter of fact, it's doubtfully also a mixture of gangster flick aura and noirish decadence, but also an action flick with heroic charlton heston to rescue the victimized petitie female janet leigh to enhance his grandeur machismo. the pastiche of three gendres accomplishes an innovative masterpiece.

The storyline is multi-layered, outsetting with an explosive bomb hidden over the trunk to blow off an important govorment officier, and the novelity of ticking tempo is grapplingly crispy. then non mexican-looking charlton heston's vargas appears with his blonde wife janet leigh, commented in the beginning with "non of them look mexican" as the sarcastic undertone. then orson welles dominates the screen with his obsese rotten copper quinlan, also intertwined with the brutish cocaine boss with a laughable wig to cover up his botchy bald.

To be faithful to the action cinema dualism of hero/villain, against roles like quinlan and cocaine boss are all made clusmsily awkward, then heston's decent guy vargas emerges as dashing and masculine with a handsome mustache. to constrain the just vargas, the cocaine gang frame vargas' wife with narcotic intoxication, and that scenario has a sub-taste of modern narcotic cinema. supplementarily marlene dietrich also partakes in the cameo of fortune-telling gypsy woman who footnotes the doom of quilan as effective cynicism, "your future is all used up.", particularly her last line on quilan's demise. "what does it matter what you say about people?".

Some criticize charlton heston's acting style and his inadequacy as mexican in it, but how about dietrich? is she conving as a german-accented gypsy? the notion of cinema thrives upon maginifed reality with delusional contortions, so naturally the inauthentic castings could be a method to emphasize the malfuntioned surroundings which permeat in the corrupted dimensions of "touch of evil", and its mythical success attributes to the hybridization of various gendres.