After Thoughts...Touch of Evil [1958] (no spoilers)

                         "Oh Mexico"

When looking back on any movie directed by Orson Welles, one's thoughts are almost always overpowered by a fascination for his meticulous and almost suave directing style.  Touch of Evil is no different and if anything, this one of his films boasts probably the single most famous piece of camerawork in Welles’ career and the history of film.  As memorable as that swooping tracking shot maybe, it holds no further discussion here as it fits all too well into another category. And as I look back, I am happy things worked out this way because had it not, the following topic would have been ignored completely.

Coming in at a close second to Welles' fine camerawork in my after thoughts of Touch of Evil would be the delightfully pomp original soundtrack composed by Henry Mancini.  Often considered the last true noir film, Touch of Evil defined itself by how it differed from the great noirs before it, felt clearly through its score.  Bent on an unsolved crime filled with seedy villains, corruption, and cops smoking cigarettes, Touch of Evil is a true and timeless noir.  But what sets this one apart from all the others is its location.  Touch of Evil is one of the few noir films to not take place in Los Angeles, instead departing south from the incumbent high rises and dark alleyways of the big city in favor of a small border town known as Los Robles.  

One Long Look...Touch of Evil [1958]

In one of the final interviews given before his death, Orson Welles stated, "I started at the top and worked down."  Part of that is true.  Welles could never match the success f he had with Citizen Kane, directing the masterpiece at only 25 years young.  Having a long and substnaitla directing career after Kane, Welles ' films were always met with cuts and re-edits by overarching producers and the success that came  seemed always second-rate.  Nowadays, Welles is considered one of the greatest directors of all time.  His intricate and innovative style filled with marvelous crane shots lends him the title of Hollywood auteur.

Second to Citizen Kane is Welles' 1958 crime thriller Touch of Evil in which we find one of the most famous shots in the history of film.  Touch of Evil opens with a marvelous three minute tracking shot that creates suspense that no other single take has ever matched.  Starting with an extreme close up of a bomb, the camera swoops up and about the city streets amongst the passing cars and pedestrians caught up in the glittering nightlife of this small border town.  The camera follows the fateful couple in the loaded car while introducing our leading man and his wife, all in one shot.  Welles took up an extraordinary task with this one shot alone, the result affirming his legacy beyond Citizen Kane as one of the great American directors of film.

                        

One Long Look (and a little history too!)...Gun Crazy [1950]

In 1967 when two characters by the name of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker first appeared on movie theater screens, their presence would make a lasting impact on the forever changed American cinema. With its release, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde was an instant hit. Its gritty yet romanticized depiction of sex and violence won over both critics and fans and marked the beginning of an exuberant trend that would soon occur in the movies. Bonnie and Clyde became one of the first motion pictures connected with and created under the New Hollywood era. Paving the way for the soon-to-arrive big Blockbuster pictures of the 1970s (Jaws, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now), this new era of American filmmaking favored more studio control, bigger budgets, and less hindrance by censorship policies. The covers were finally ripped off in movies so to say.  Movies from this era such as The Graduate and Blow-Up pioneered a trend of unrepressed sexuality while films like Straw Dogs were packed tight with gut-wrenching violence.  Penn managed to sustain both of these exotic themes in perfect balance with Bonnie and Clyde and in the end managed to create a masterpiece that has yet to be forgotten.  Innovative, striking and perverse all adequately describe this great movie and very deservingly, Bonnie and Clyde will always be remembered as an American classic holding its place on the AFI’s list of 100 Best American films.

But Bonnie and Clyde technically did not mark the movie debut of the two rambunctious bank robbers.  Seventeen years prior to Penn’s movie, the couple appeared on screen under the names Annie Starr and Bart Tare in the 1950 film Gun Crazy directed by Joseph H. Lewis.  Also taken from the real life account of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Gun Crazy tells the same story of two impulsive, bank robbing lovers- and did it first.  Though Gun Crazy was also a smash hit on its release and remains a critical acclaimed film (preserved in the National Film Registry), it is hard to say the original outshines its successor.    Many people simply do not know the original 1950 film exists, while others simply prefer to pass on it in favor of the more modernized, sexualized and violent 1967 version.

Similarities aside, Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy together represent the phenomenon of this singular story as constructed by two different eras of American filmmaking.  Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde had the freedom to blast their way through everyone and everything, showing it all too.  His film includes one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history.  But back in 1950, violence to the extent at which it is displayed to the audience in Bonnie and Clyde was not tolerated by censorship regulations of the time.  Lewis’ surrogate Bonnie and Clyde duo was forced to implement the same type of violent renegade characters only in a more repressed and subtle manner.  These tightly-bound censorship policies manifest themselves in a particular scene from Gun Crazy in which a long take is employed.  Here, the differences between the old Classical Hollywood and the New Hollywood are on full display.