Touch of Evil begins amidst the vast cacophony of a border town evening with a dazzling shot considered to one of the greatest in cinema. The single 3 ½-minute take starts as a close-up on a bomb made with some dynamite and an egg timer. The camera pulls back to see a man placing the bomb into the trunk of car immediately before a couple gets in the vehicle. They drive off and we float down the street where a ethnically diverse soundscape concocts an otherworldly atmosphere developing shades of local color from stark black and white photography.

The car drives past and the shot rests for a moment at the border guard post where Mike Vargas and his new American wife Susie discuss crossing the border. The conversation almost makes us forget what has gone before as the newlyweds get permission to cross and walk off for a night alone on the other side of the border. The music sounds through the air and the couple embraces. They kiss.

And then the car explodes.

In the epic book of interviews This Is Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich asked the director how he accomplished that shot. “I had a great camera operator,” Welles said, “but there’s, technically, another more difficult crane shot in Touch of Evil which nobody ever recognizes as such.” Charlton Heston would later write about it in his journals:

We rehearsed all day. […] We never turned on a camera all morning or all afternoon, the studio brass gathering in the shadows in anxious little knots. By the time we began filming at 5:45 [PM], I knew they’d written off the whole day. At 7:40, Orson said, “OK, print. That’s a wrap on this set. We’re two days ahead of schedule.” Twelve pages in one take, including inserts, two-shots, over-shoulders; the whole scene in one, moving through three rooms, with seven speaking parts.

To fully appreciate Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, it must be recognized that it is not a film entirely about story. The twisted narrative of drugs, sex, and corruption is gripping, but ultimately proves finite and a bit difficult to follow. This indictment doesn’t prove damning … just a bit disappointing.

Charlton Heston as Vargas

Heston’s acting was praised by Welles in the aforementioned Bogdanovich interviews, but doesn’t hold up to the actor’s usual reputation as a heroic strong-man. He plays Vargas in brown face with little-to-no accent while the role calls for a type of subtlety he is incapable of. Heston may be watchable, but he’s never quite gripping. Janet Leigh’s role as Vargas’ wife seems the most taxing piece of acting in the movie, but her lines are sometimes delivered with an obvious glee that stinks of a teleprompter. Still, Leigh remains her beautiful self for the length of the film (which is more than enough for some people).

Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan

Each plot strand of Touch of Evil is fearlessly introduced in that first shot save one key element: Hank Quinlan, the portly police detective played by Orson Welles himself. Quinlan is a scummy dirtbag of a cop who awkwardly lumbers his way through the film with a cigar firmly planted in his mouth. Touches of corruption have filtered into his daily routine to the tune of framing suspects, bullying them into confession, and planting evidence to “prove” them guilty. Its no surprise that Mike Vargas, a young and idealistic Mexican United Nations representative, comes to blows with Quinlan and the equally shady company he keeps.

Vargas won’t put up with it. Though Quinlan and the young Mexican are supposed to be on the same side, the lawman makes a deal with an unsavory bigwig of the drug cartel named “Uncle” Joe Grande (Akim Tamiroff) to “kidnap” Vargas’ beautiful American wife. Torn between fighting for Quinlan’s comeuppance and the protection of his wife, Vargas experiences the reality of corruption firsthand. Warped logic is nothing new under the sun as Quinlan’s attempts to punish evil becomes evil in itself.

Janet Leigh as Susie Vargas

Compelling stuff, but the style is so overwhelming – even transcendent at times – that the story almost becomes inconsequential. Dare I say it even feels lazy at times? Marlene Dietrich’s character was thought up by Welles after shooting began and The Night Man at the hotel where Susie Vargas is taken was added simply because Welles wanted to put Dennis Weaver in a movie.

Welles was a master craftsman of the highest order and his complete original vision for Touch of Evil may have been every bit the masterpiece expected from him, but studios never quite understood the man and loved to mercilessly mess with his films (The Magnificent Ambersons and Mr. Arkadin prove as prime examples of this). It was only in 1998 that famed film editor Walter Murch undertook an effort to restore what was left of Touch of Evil to Welles’ original vision.

Marlene Dietrich in a guest appearance

Welles often liked to talk about how a film should flow like a piece of music. Many times he wasn’t speaking literally, but this film owes an awful lot to Henry Mancini’s score which creates a specific sound for each major character and situation. The layered soundscape in the beginning is featured through different parts of the film while the haunting conga drum beats float like a ghost through a majority of the scenes creating tension whenever they appear. The movie ends with the sad pianola melody (formed around the “special guest appearance” of Marelene Dietrich) lingering through the credits creating a desire to remember days past — days of honorable men and, perhaps, great detectives who aren’t lousy cops.

Touch of Evil is the last film highlighted in this month-long film noir series and many scholars consider it an epitaph for the whole movement. There are many reasons this could be, but perhaps it is because Touch of Evil offers the dirtiest of all noir heroes with the character of Hank Quinlan. The Vargas, the obvious moral hero of the story, lacks the qualities of a noir hero — he always keeps his honor and is bound by justice and a desire to do right. When brought to his wits’ end, justice is never torn from his path of vision.

Its easy to assume that Hank Quinlan was once a paragon of honesty and idealism, but a few too many steps into the harsh light of injustice have made him dedicate himself to never letting a suspected killer run free no matter what illegal action is taken. The sum total of his actions and experiences create a completely evil man with nary a hope of redemption. His final undoing is a twisted baptism into a squalid lake of filth followed by the remaining characters disappearing into the dark shadows of a summer night.

The lasting effect of Welles’ misunderstood classic is not the attempted treatise on the ethics of power, but a revolutionary triumph in the mechanics of filmmaking. Touch of Evil put a cap on the noir movement and left filmmakers creative inspiration for the future of film. What more could be expected from the legendary Orson Welles?