Orson Welles Talks Touch of Evil, James Cagney & Jean Renoir

The beginning of one of Wells' most spectacular opening sequences unfolds in a three-minute, 20-second continuous shot with a crane. Wells had been living and working in exile in Europe for almost 10 years when he returned to Hollywood in 1958 to almost by accident create one of his most unforgettable film performances and one of the greatest crime thrillers ever made. The script had originally been sent by Universal to Charlton. Heston under the title The Badge of Evil was a fairly routine police story but even if it had been a better script, as I pointed out. For them, with the exception of westerns, they have been doing police stories longer and more frequently than any other genre and , therefore, it is extremely difficult to find a script that has a script that survives on its own.

I said that the director is even more important in this than in most types of films. I said who will direct it. They said, "Well, we haven't chosen a director yet. We've got Orson Welles to do the heavy lifting, although this was over a long-distance phone and after a static-filled pause, he said, why don't you direct it? It's a pretty good director, you know, and the reaction at first was a long silence, like I had suggested that my mother direct the movie and after a while I was like, yeah, that's right, we'll get back to you, so I'll quickly.

They called again and said will you direct this movie? We can't fail you anymore. I said I will direct it, but if I can write it too, every word will be completely new. They said yes, so I had three weeks before they were forced to start. I hired about 12 secretaries 24 hours a day and made a completely new script. Orson then proceeded to rewrite the entire script in about ten days by himself, which I knew he would do and greatly improved the entire script and his part where China. I would give him the Touch of Evil it is of course really the story of the decline and fall of Captain Quinlan Orson part ah my part the Mexican lawyer Vargas serves as a witness must be physically the most grotesque The characters yes, yes, they are quite grotesque and not long after To start the film I gave a dinner for all my old producer friends and the frenzy of the big stars of the old Hollywood Brigade, my wife prepared a splendid meal and I arrived a little late, so they were all there. having their drinks before sitting down I came in to hang out in my makeup and costume and everyone said how are you and you look great and you know I was an acid monster that's clean enough you're a Mess baby they didn't know they had in my lane to Dietrich, she showed up in the rush, they said that's my lana Dietrich and they called her and said you're in this photo and she said yes and they said well, what's your salary? and she says don't put my name in the photo, the least you put my name in, go to my agent, so they saw our agent and they were delighted and it was roses all the way until that door closed on me, keep going being a mystery I have no idea what it was about once again Welles was excluded from the post-production of his own film and cuts were made to it why again in this case we were excluded I have no idea it has never been explained why they all love a rush days the head of the studio came to me and asked me to come to the office and sign a contract for several films, you know, it's great, then they saw a first cut and I was so horrified that they wouldn't do it.

They let me into the studio and no one ever explained to me what horrified them. They tried with all their might to stop him. Heston had won an Oscar and was a big star and they released it without a press release, without appearing second on the poster with a photo of me. America and was screened immediately afterwards in Brussels, at the Universal Exhibition, where it won the award for best film of the year and the distributor, the Belgian distributor who had submitted it to competition against the will of the studio and had worked for universal cinema. for 20 years he was fired, then it premiered in a small theater and Ferriss's publicist, where he stayed for two years, has made a lot of money even in the United States to his tremendous fury, you know, the last thing they wanted was a success and no one gave it to them. has ever explained. that mmm Chuck Heston doesn't know, they would never have told him, they certainly never told me, we don't know what it is, it's just too dark for them, weird, I think you know, I don't know, I don't know.

I think we would have had that reaction now a little too harsh a little too black but that's a guess I don't know it's arson it really seems to me like he just wants to work but at the same time there's something in him that drives him to alienate people with the money perhaps there is a subconscious vein that makes him resentful because unlike a painter who if necessary could work in a supermarket bagging groceries and earn the money to buy paintings, that as a director he cannot do, but he must do it. somehow persuade his studio to give him the money and perhaps on some subconscious level Orson has never been able to accept this.

I can't believe he wouldn't have been more successful than he was in getting them to give him the money to make movies there. It's a myth in the film community, for example, that Arson is an unreliable director, that he's wasteful without disrespecting directors like Mike Nichols and Michael Jimmy, nay, Spielberg and Coppola. Orson hasn't spent that much money on all the movies he's made. in their lifetime as they have wasted overreach in any film and this is a simple statement of fact and I dare say they would subscribe to it Touch of Evil is not a great film but certainly one marked with patches of brilliance it was filmed in the shortest schedule I worked on and it came in on time and slightly over budget, the budget was less than a million dollars, too?

Much of it gives very little room for maneuver. I mean, the famous opening shot is a shot with Chapman. burrows it didn't it was covered no we didn't spend all night filming that shot yes in fact if you look at the printed shot you can see the hints of dawn breaking on the horizon that was the last shot they were doing together was that only the last one was used Maybe, yes, but the difficult thing about that shot was that the little park player who was the customs inspector at the end of the shot kept

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ing his lines, which can be understood, he would see this vast entourage approaching him from two blocks away. away and finally son of a bitch he said look I don't care if you forget the line he said just move your lips he said I beg you just don't say oh wow sir.

Well, I'm sorry, but it's one of the many notable knocks in that movie. You are American citizens. Yes, our viewers will know that because this is in the movie, there are conversations going on between rates and refills and someone said Touch of Evil. It seemed very unreal and yet real and I corrected that statement by saying that what I was trying to do was make something that was unreal but true and I think that is the definition of the highest type of theatricality, the best type and that is the type of theatricality that can exist in movies as well as in the theater, and I think that because there is something that is more unreal and stylized than Cagney, it is totally stylized unreal acting, no human being has ever behaved the way that He does it and every moment of Cagney, all of life in the movies is true, he never had a second that wasn't true now, that's right, he was certainly larger than life, he did everything dangerously and you know, like we were playing at Madison Square Garden and it was always cinematically true but unreal, but that's the difference.

I guess I think there's always that term for the viewer anyway, a kind of moral ambiguity about the characters of Quinlin's character, yes, but although he's evolved well, you know what Renoir said, he said everyone has their reasons and That's what really sums it up. I know that there is no villain who does not have his reasons and the bigger the villain the more interesting he becomes the more you explain his Villa de no then psychiatrically it is not because mom did not love him but because you humanize yourself no The more human you make the monster, the more The story must be interesting.

It seems to me that Quinlan's instincts also turn out to be correct even though the methods are right or wrong. You see, his method is totally incorrect in my position in the political world. or the moral sense is completely anti-Quinlin. Personally, I'm absolutely on Heston's side, but playing Quinlin and having a character like that, I had to make him a real person. I've been trapped in a soldier of what I hope is a soldier. a true monster because he was a successful police officer who used means that work but simply go against all the good instincts we have in a democratic world.

He's everything we hate, but it's not what we hate, it's his way and yet he would do it. He would never have put those people behind bars if he hadn't and it's that ambiguity that gives tension to a story. You know, that ambivalence. Rather, you also allow him this fantastic epitaph with the ending. Yeah, well, she was pretty good, pretty good. that's why she was a kind of woman, yes, it is the last great performance of her, without a doubt, Canada got another masterpiece from the frog.