Touch Of Evil

Look at this amazing color still from the production of Touch Of Evil, how cool, it makes it seem like it could be happening today not 57 years ago. That alley is probably still there in Venice, CA. Everybody talks about the opening shot, which I love, but the shot that also blows my mind is in the love nest apartment, where Quinlan plants the dynamite in the bathroom, check that out, it’s another very, very long take and the overlapping dialog plays like a radio play. It’s so masterfully done you don’t realize you’ve just watched a 5 minute take (or whatever legnth it is.) Watch it with the sound off then you can pay attention to the staging, there’s a lot of off camera dialog that directs your attention outside the frame. As Claude Chabrol said”Off screen dialog is extremely powerful.”

Another side note, I recently re-watched Godards Alphaville, Akim Tamiroff is in it as well as Toch Of Evil. In TOE he winds up dead with his tongue grotesquely protruding from his mouth, in Alphaville he keeps sticking out his tongue in the scene in his hotel room with the Seductress 3rd class and Lemmy Caution. Did Godard direct him to do that as a reference to TOE? The Cahiers du Cinema gang were the first to praise Welles movie as a masterpiece, the studio didn’t like it. He was a bit too far ahead of his time once again.