Touch of Evil (1958)
Directed by Orson Welles
A border-town bombing draws Mexican investigator Miguel Vargas into a corruption-ridden police investigation led by crooked captain Hank Quinlan, setting off a deadly struggle over power, justice, and truth.
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What critics compared Touch of Evil to
The film's first shot, inspired by the three-minute opening of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, would send the camera "traversing the whole universe" until it landed on the Dune planet.
The movie features ample explication of his designs, including an opening shot designed to top Orson Welles's " Touch of Evil " and a spectacular Harkonnen fortress that, artist H.R. Giger admits, wasn't actually in the novel.
The director planned to stake his claim on greatness from the movie’s opening shot, a Touch Of Evil–inspired long take that would begin in the far reaches of the galaxy and appear to track all the way down to ground level.
He’s mesmerizing when he describes his camera following a “spiritual” insemination after a castrated man’s wife turns a drop of blood into semen, or when he rhapsodizes over his intergalactic take on the turbulent journey through Tijuana at the start of Welles’ “Touch of Evil” – an influence that probably made him think of using Welles in his own movie.
Starting off at break-neck speed with a Mexican-based opening sequence that is grandiose, luscious and just downright absorbing (while also paying homage to Touch Of Evil ), Spectre then follows this up with a number of captivating action set-pieces that just about match the opener, but never top it.
There are echoes here of Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil in a roving sequence which runs for minutes without cutting before culminating in explosive fashion.
Spectre opens in Mexico City — a Day of the Dead festival in full swing — streets crowded with partying skeletons, and director Sam Mendes celebrating the dead in his own way with a nifty Orson Welles tribute: A Touch of Evil-style tracking shot that has no obvious edits for at least five minutes as it follows Bond (Daniel Craig) and a gorgeous brunette (Stephanie Sigman) from the costumed parade route into a hotel, up in a crowded elevator to a well-appointed room where she settles seductively on a bed — only to watch him zip out onto a roof ledge with a quick shirt cuff adjustment, and murder on his mind.
This, after a promising start, when director Sam Mendes (“Skyfall”) delivers a terrific pre-title sequence straight out of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” as Hoyte Van Hoytema’s camera tracks through Mexico City’s Zocalo square, where thousands dressed in skeletal costumes are celebrating the Day of the Dead.
With Spectre — the twenty-fourth James Bond picture and the fourth and probably final one to feature Daniel Craig as 007 — director Sam Mendes takes a tip, perhaps unwittingly, from Hitchcock, as well as from Orson Welles's Touch of Evil: The picture opens in Mexico City with a regal, ambitious, Wellesian tracking shot that begins in the midst of a Day of the Dead parade and eventually finds its way to Craig's Bond, standing in the crowd.
It seems unfair to compare most any movie to Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers or to Touch of Evil, but this one begs for such through, for example, specific reference to that latter, also 1950s Welles thriller.
The writer-director incorporates a scene from the 1958 Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil to show where he's at in terms of crime drama, meaning get ready to have the rug pulled out from under you.
But neither the dank criminality nor the clip from Touch of Evil makes In Bruges noir any more than the hints of surrealism make it Fellini.
Travolta, who has been working up a movie idea of his own, and has a near-encyclopedic recall of great movies (from Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil" to "Rio Lobo"), smells a great opportunity.
It pays homage to scrappy "B" movies, Orson Welles' great noir Touch of Evil, and the films of Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo), who no doubt would have been the first one to enjoy Get Shorty.
At one point, he takes in a screening of Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil," and the boyish delight he gets from its climax suddenly makes him look 20 years younger.
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I dislike the gimmick, at least at this length; staying on a single take creates a sense of hanging in midair as we wonder when we’ll finally hit the ground, and it works beautifully for a single scene like the opening of Spectre or Touch of Evil (1958) , the Orson Welles film that inspired all subsequent one-take sorcery.
“Touch of Evil” opens with the most famous “long take” in cinema history.
This technique has been used in several films whether for long sequences, as in the opening of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” (1958), or entire films, like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s more recent “Birdman” (2014).
But much like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, The Irishman deals with themes Orson Welles tapped in his 1958 masterpiece Touch of Evil: that in order to get at some profound truth — about the meaning of life or the passage of time — sometimes an artist has to tell a few lies.
The filmmaker’s husband, Peter Sarsgaard, shows up dressed like Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil,”…
Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey uses it to the full, toward the start in a long, intricate tracking shot that mimics Orson Welles’ classic “Touch of Evil” opening (though, it must be said, without the same frisson—a copy never matches the original).
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Phantom of the Paradise is equal parts compendium of the director's interests as a cinephile - Touch of Evil and (naturally) Psycho are among the classics to be explicitly referenced - and showcase for the young Turk's visual flair.
With his wavering British accent and $200 million abs, Jake Gyllenhaal is about as authentically Persian as Charlton Heston was a Mexican in Touch Of Evil, but he certainly cuts a good figure, and cinematographer John Seale, who won an Oscar for The English Patient, flatters him in every shot.