Worth the Upgrade

Containing all video versions and the script of Welles's revisions, this update of the noir classic is certainly worth the money (or trade-in for your old version). I'm biased, of course, as this is one of my favorite film noir classics, one of the last official examples of the style. Welles, Heston, Leigh, Dietrich,in great roles, alone makes it worth the price. Akim Tamiroff as the Mexican crime boss and, in smaller roles, Dennis Weaver, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mercedes McCambridge (!) add even more interest.The photography and music are top-notch,and even the minor supporting actors all contribute excellent performances. If you have any interest in noir, you should have this version.

[Tuesday, January 06, 2009]

film noir meets shakespeare

film noir may have gotten out of style or petered out of existence due to its over-exposition, then welles came and made touch of evil, and re-invented the genre by adding a touch of shakespeare with a truly decadent, distorted, depraved energy. i would even dare say a grotesque baroque energy. and when i read or utter the word grotesque i immediately think of another movie, get shorty, where the main character goes to the movie to see touch of evil. how fitting!

we all know of the famous first scene, continuous, a technical prowess at the time - replicated by altman himself at the beginning of his movie the player. welles' first scene introduces movement, kinetic energy, noise, chaos. he reinforces this sense of movement throughout the movie, experimenting with various angles, perspectives, closed or opened shots and picture compositions. the camera is very dynamic throughout. at the same time he sets himself as a deformed anchor. his body is front and center, immovable, difficult to avoid, a lumbering piece of flesh which contrasts with the sense of movement that abounds everywhere else. this dichotomy is repeated in different tones and hues: 1) contrasting a shakespearian narrative with the film noir genre, 2) loyalty and friendship with betrayal, 3) law enforcement with corruption, 4) characters with a narrative meaning and characters with no narrative meaning, e.g. marlene dietrich's character, 5) the crisp style black and white brings with the deformity of the sound track and welles body.

welles played oversized characters - kane, othello, macbeth. his gift to us is i think a rendition of these characters into one, quinlan, who follows the same destiny, from grandeur to a miserable end. only this time welles brings in a touch of his own life, an autobiographical touch which makes evil very real.

this movie is a gem. watch it over and over again.

[Saturday, January 03, 2009]

Borderline noir

Yes, this is the sleaze-noir Orson Welles classic with THAT famous tracking shot, Charlton Heston as a Mexican police detective, and Janet Leigh in various stages of undress. Welles casts himself as Hank Quinlan, a morally bankrupt police captain who lords over a corrupt border town. Quinlan is the most hideous grotesquerie Welles ever created as an actor, and certainly stands as one the most unique and complex heavies in all of film noir. The film features one of the last great roles for Marlene Dietrich, who gets all the best lines ("You should lay off those candy bars."). The scene where Leigh gets terrorized in an abandoned motel by a group of thugs led by an ultra-creepy, leather-jacketed Mercedes McCambridge could have been directed by David Lynch; there are numerous such stylistic flourishes throughout that are simply light-years ahead of anything else going on in filmmaking at the time (1958). Fans of the film have had to make do with an improperly matted and cropped DVD transfer-until now. Not only have those screen ratio issues been corrected, but we are also given 3 different cuts of the film in this new edition: the restored and re-edited 1998 version (re-cut to the specifications that Welles had requested in a 58-page memo to the studio that ultimately fell on deaf ears), the original theatrical version, and the preview version (which has a commentary track with Heston and Leigh). Extras galore. (This review is for the 2008 50th Anniversary Edition, BTW).

[Tuesday, December 23, 2008]

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