Favorite Films: Touch of Evil

Took a look at the stats for this blog thing earlier today and discovered one of the most popular posts is actually a two-parter (1 & 2) I did a little over a year ago about whether or not Citizen Kane sucks or not (it doesn’t, though many Google searchers might disagree).

But, as much as I like Citizen Kane, my favorite Orson Welles picture is Touch of Evil, from 1958.

Unfortunately, the studio kicked him off the project during post-production and re-edited the picture, releasing a skeleton of the film Welles had put his heart and soul into.  Furious about the changes, Welles composed a 58-page memo to the heads of the studio detailing the changes he wanted to be made to their version of his movie.

They refused and Welles began to fade away.  A dozen or so years ago, the brilliant editor Walter Murch got his hands on an old work print of the film and reconstructed it according to Welles’ memo.

The result is a magnificent crime picture, rife with sin, reefer, grime, the greatest tracking shot in the history of the cinema and an overwhelming aura of cool.

In the film, Charlton Heston plays a Mexican drug agent named Vargas.  That’s right, Mr. NRA himself, Charlton Heston plays a Mexican.  He and his new American wife (Janet Leigh) are looking forward to their honeymoon in Mexico. As they cross the border a car bomb explodes and Heston is pulled into the case, along with his nemesis, the larger than life American cop Harry Quinlan (Welles).

And of course there’s the incredible opening tracking shot, most famously referenced in Robert Altman’s The Player.

Does Citizen Kane Suck? – Part 2

So, yesterday I was wondering if Citizen Kane was boring like some folks had been telling me recently.  My argument has always been that it’s great, but I haven’t seen it since the late 90′s, so what do I know?  Last night I watched it again and IT’S TERRIFIC!  It even says so on the movie poster.

So, what’s the deal?  Why do some of my friends who ordinarily can tell good from bad have little love for Kane?  Is it the occasionally over-stylized acting?  Maybe.  Black and White?  No way, they’re better than that. Unattainably high expectations created by lists like the AFI’ 100 Greatest Movies along with an incredible mythology/history rooted in outrageous facts and fictions?  Bingo!

Being ranked “THE BEST” is a pretty impossible situation.  Expectations are raised to a level that can only rarely be satisfied.  Especially when there are sooooooo many great films in the world.

So, why bother ranking things?  Why not take the consensus 10 or 20 best, and put them out there without ranking which of the ten is the best ten?  It’s all so arbitrary and leaves no room for individual tastes and experiences.

Paul Schrader, when attempting to write a Film Canon (intro only [read the whole thing as a PDF here]) strived to “…as best I could, to separate personal favorites from those movies that artistically defined film history.”  Maybe that’s where the conflict arises between the “great” films and the ones we really love and could watch over and over again.

I enjoyed watching Citizen Kane again; marveling at its exquisite cinematography, masterful manipulation of traditional narrative structure and its absorbing story of the rise and fall of a truly singular personality (embodying the parallelish real lives and downward spirals of William Randolph Hearst and Welles himself), but the reality is that it’s not even on my personal top 10 favorites list.  I like it.  It’s great.  IT’S TERRIFIC!  But, it can’t quite reconcile the chasm sometimes separating greatest and favoritest, which changes from person to person (with art being all subjective and stuff). 

Thus the disconnect between the canonized films and those that make us feel something new, fulfilling and unexplainable.  Perhaps my friends went into Kane expecting the kind of transformative experience that the films reputation seemed to promise.  Unfair to be sure, but it is what it is.

Schrader’s canon has The Rules of the Game at the #1 spot and Kane drops to 6.  If rankings are necessary, then I think I can get behind this one.  I have a far greater fondness for Rules as it connects with me on a more emotional level than Kane, which feels more intellectual, colder.  And unlike Kane, which is forced to be “THE ONE,” Rules can simply be.

Or maybe the people who think Citizen Kane is boring are just dumb and should go back to their 4 hour director’s cut of the Watchmen.  There’s no accounting for taste as they say.

Does Citizen Kane Suck? – Part 1

Does Citizen Kane suck? This subject has been thrown my way on more than one occasion (usually at a bar, of course).  These naysayers acknowledge the ground breaking stature of the picture and all the technical filmic things that you’ll hear about in a college film history class, but as a modern viewer, they find it incredibly boring.  After half-heartedly defending the picture over and over again I have to ask myself: Is it boring? Do I even care?

So, I intend to watch Citizen Kane at some point this week (first time in a decade probably) and decide once and for all if this benchmark of the cinema still deserves all the hype. Stay tuned…