Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 25: Thu Jan 25

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1959): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm


This screening is part of the Orson Welles season at Close-Up Cinema from January 15th to 30th, and is also being shown on January 20th. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Eternal damnation to the wretch at Universal who printed the opening titles over the most brilliant establishing shot in film history—a shot that establishes not only place and main characters in its continuous movement over several city blocks, but also the film's theme (crossing boundaries), spatial metaphors, and peculiar bolero rhythm. Made in 1958, it was Orson Welles's last Hollywood film, and in it he makes transcendent use of the American technology his genius throve on; never again would his resources be so rich or his imagination so fiendishly baroque. Welles stars as the sheriff of a corrupt border town who finds his nemesis in visiting Mexican narcotics agent Charlton Heston; the witnesses to this weirdly gargantuan struggle include Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Akim Tamiroff, and Joseph Calleia, who holds the film's moral center with sublime uncertainty.

Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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