In my younger years I hated this film because it was all over the place, the performances seemed garish, the camera angles distorted the actors' faces, the storyline was hard to follow, and Charlton Heston seemed terribly miscast. A recent viewing proved to me that these aren't deficiencies, they actually enhance the film, and that it's every bit as influential and groundbreaking as Citizen Kane. Orson Welles is magnificently corrupt, proving that he wasn't just a good director, he was also a fine actor, capable of profound nuance with a glance or a muttered line, or a terrifying facial expression. I don't know anything about the process of filmmaking, but to direct and act in your own film must require a certain amount of skill, madness, or both. I had to laugh at what is at least the second time that Janet Leigh is stuck with a creepy innkeeper, and Dennis Weaver is ten times creepier than Anthony Perkins was in Psycho. The end scene is a case study in suspenseful filmmaking, and I have to wonder how long it took to film....everyone talks about the innovative opening shot, but the end scene is shot from so many angles that Welles must have exhausted every single vantage point in order to nail it down. I came away impressed this time around, and I think it's a great tragedy that Welles's career took him down some different roads in the years ahead, who knows what he could have accomplished if he had been just as committed to his artistry as he clearly was for this film.
Review of Touch of Evil
