It takes chutzpah to monkey with Orson Welles, even for the best of reasons, and without a doubt this unprecedented revision of Touch Of Evil was undertaken with the best intentions. While I can quibble with a few details, the result is a remarkable success. Forty years after the fact, producer Rick Schmidlin and Oscar winning film and sound editor Walter Murch have given Welles his due and made Touch Of Evil into the film he wanted to make.

Now let’s be clear on one thing: this is not a director’s cut, although it’s as close as we may ever come to one. “(A)n academic example of what Welles intended,” is how revision producer Rick Schmidlin describes it. In fact Welles never completed his own cut. After studio executives viewed Welles’ work in progress in 1957 they assigned a new editor and asked Welles to step aside. To make a long and very complicated story short, Welles viewed the studio’s rough cut months later and wrote a detailed 58-page memo describing the changes he felt needed to be made to save the film. Discovered a few years back by Welles scholar (and subsequent project advisor) Jonathan Rosenbaum, this memo became the primary source in Schmidlin’s innovative project: using Welles’ very specific instructions to reconstruct Touch Of Evil.

Orson Welles and Charlton Heston survey the (planted) evidence

Even in its various compromised versions (between film and video there are no less than three existing cuts of the film), Welles’ baroque border town murder mystery is a wild masterpiece, sleazy, grimy, jittery, and ultimately dazzling work of cinematic magic. Charlton Heston plays straight-arrow Mexican government Mike Vargas agent whose planned honeymoon with his American bride Susie (Janet Leigh) is derailed by a sensationalistic murder. Enter police detective Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), a bloated, blustery grotesque with a doughy face and an ill manner. An instant antagonism develops between the educated Vargas and the misanthropic Quinlan which intensifies to a rabid hatred when Vargas uncovers evidence that Quinlan has framed a suspect.

Fans of the familiar Touch Of Evil will notice the differences in this revision immediately. The famous opening crane shot turns into a riveting dramatic scene with the removal of the credits and the revelation of the Welles’ dense sound design, previously buried by the brassy opening theme. My initial response was a sense of loss – that bongo beat and the growling horns had become a part of the familiar experience, so married to the image it seemed inseparable. But as the camera follows the parallel journeys of the car (carrying a ticking bomb) and the strolling newlywed couple as they weave their way through the bustling Mexican border town, the rediscovered soundtrack (with musical additions by Murch as per Welles’ instructions) gives a specific sense of place of movement with its street sounds competing with car radios and nightclub music weaving in and out of the mix.

With the abrupt explosion Welles’ style becomes more expressionistic – looming low angles, jittery handheld shots, edgy editing – and the new cutting design outlined by Welles serves this style better. The subsequent scenes are tightened up with insistent intercutting between the Vargas/Quinlan confrontations on the American side of the border and Susie’s run-in with racketeer “Uncle Joe” Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) in Mexico, creating a driving pace with a greater sense of urgency and tension. The subsequent changes are less obvious (a trim here, an insert there, a couple of short scenes cut), but the film never looked or sounded better, and Walter Murch draws all of his sources from the original soundtracks. The painstaking restoration of film elements shows in every frame. For my money it’s never worked better either.

Universal’s two-disc set features both the original 93-minute theatrical release and the longer “preview version” discovered in the Universal vaults in mid-seventies along with the revised version, which makes this release the DVD debut of those earlier versions.

All three cuts are included in this two-disc set, along with four commentary tracks spread over the three versions. Rick Schmidlin hosts a track with stars Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh (obviously recorded years before but never heard until now), with Schmidlin commenting on the changes in the “restored version” and drawing production stories and experiences from the stars. Welles historian/consultant Jonathan Rosenbaum and fellow Welles historian James Naremore discuss the “preview version” with a mix of production details and interpretations. Critic F.X. Feeney and Schmidlin also offer solo tracks. Also includes two featurettes (one on the making of the film, one on history of the various versions and the process of reconstructing the new cut) and a reproduction of the original 58-page memo that inspired the entire project.

I review the film in my MSN DVD column here.

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