Touch of Evil
Re-edited Version of 1998 | Rekonstruierte Version von 1998
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © Universal Pictures

Orson Welles, Charlton Heston
Touch of Evil | Re-edited Version of 1998 | Rekonstruierte Version von 1998 by Orson Welles
USA 1958, Retrospective
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © Universal Pictures

Janet Leigh (Mitte | center)
Touch of Evil | Re-edited Version of 1998 | Rekonstruierte Version von 1998 by Orson Welles
USA 1958, Retrospective
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © Universal Pictures

Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil | Re-edited Version of 1998 | Rekonstruierte Version von 1998 by Orson Welles
USA 1958, Retrospective
Source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © Universal Pictures

Janet Leigh
Touch of Evil | Re-edited Version of 1998 | Rekonstruierte Version von 1998 by Orson Welles
USA 1958, Retrospective
Source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © Universal Pictures
A car bomb kills a wealthy American in a US border town. Mexican narcotics cop Miguel Vargas and his wife, Susan, witness the crime. Vargas gets involved in the investigation, headed by corrupt US police captain Hank Quinlan. Vargas discovers Quinlan planting evidence against a young suspect and an argument ensues. Meanwhile, one of Vargas’ Mexican drug cases comes back to haunt him, when the dealer’s thugs harass Vargas’ wife, Susan, before drugging and kidnapping her. When she wakes up, she finds a corpse lying next to her; a body that goes on Quinlan’s account. Extolled by Paul Schrader as the “epitaph for film noir”, Touch of Evil takes the thriller genre into a cinematic experience of the beyond. The “Weimar Touch” is on full stylistic display with high-contrast, tilted, often “expressionist” camerawork, and of course a living, breathing Marlene Dietrich. In her role as cathouse madam Tanya – the owner, like the Blue Angel, of a player piano – Welles lights and shoots Dietrich as befits a movie icon. As the director told Peter Bogdanovich in 1961, “Marlene was extraordinary in that, she really was the Super-Marlene. Everything she has ever been was in that little house for about four minutes there”.