Orson Welles Talks Touch of Evil, James Cagney & Jean Renoir

the beginning of one of wells most spectacular opening sequences it develops into a continuous three-minute 20 second crane shot Wells had been living and working in exile in Europe for nearly 10 years when he returned to Hollywood in 1958 to create almost by accident one of his most unforgettable screen performances and one of the finest crime thrillers ever made the script had originally been sent by Universal to Charlton Heston under the title badge of evil it was a fairly routine police story but even had it been a better script as I pointed out to them with the exception of westerns they'd been making police stories longer and oftener than any other single genre and therefore it's extremely difficult to come up with a script which has a script will will survive on its own I said the director is even more important in this than in most kinds of pictures I said who's gonna direct it they said well we haven't picked a director yet we have Orson Welles to do the heavy though this was on the long-distance phone and after a static filled pause I said why don't you have him directed he's a pretty good director you know and the reaction at first was a prolonged silence as though I had suggested that my mother direct the film and after a while I said duh yeah that's right we'll love we'll get back to you so they quickly called me back again and said will you direct this picture we can't fail you anymore I said I'll direct it but if I also get to write it every word of it an entirely new script they said yes so I had three weeks before we were forced to start I hired about about 12 secretaries around the clock and made an entirely new script Orson then proceeded to rewrite the entire script in about ten days by himself which I knew he would and vastly improved the whole script and his part where China he would the Touch of Evil is of course really the story of the decline and fall of captain Quinlan Orson's part ah my part the Mexican lawyer Vargas serves as a witness he must be physically the most grotesque characters yes yes is pretty grotesque and I gave a dinner party not long after I started the picture for all my old producer friends and big star frenzy old Hollywood Brigade my wife laid on a splendid meal and I was a little late so they were all there having their drinks before I would sit down I came in in order to derive in time in my makeup and costume and they all said how are yours and you're looking great and you know I was an acid monster that's clean enough you're a mess honey they didn't know they had in my lane to Dietrich she turned up in the rushes they said that's my lana Dietrich and they called her up and said you're in this picture and she said yes and they said well what's your salary and she says you don't put my name on the picture it's the minimum you put my name on see my agent so so they saw our agent they were delighted and and it was roses all the way until that gate closed on me it's still a mystery I have no idea what it was about once again Welles was barred from the post production of his own film and cuts were made in it why again in this case we shut out from I have no idea it's never been explained because they love the rushes every day the head of the studio came to me and wanted me to come to the office and sign a deal for several pictures you know it's great stuff then they saw a rough cut of it and I was they were so horrified that they wouldn't let me in the studio and nobody's ever explained what horrified them they tried very hard really to stop it Heston had won an Oscar and was a great star and they released it without a press release without fresh showing second on the bill with an me picture in America and it was shown in Brussels right afterwards at the World's Fair where it got the prize for the best picture of the year and the distributor the Belgian distributor who had put it into the contest against the will of the studio and had worked for the universal for 20 years was fired it then opened in a small theater and Ferriss publicist where it ran two years it's made a lot of money even in America to their tremendous rage you know the last thing they wanted was a success and nobody has ever explained it to it mmm Chuck Heston doesn't know I'd they never told him they certainly never told me we don't know what it is it's just too dark for them - strange - I think you know I don't know I don't think we would have had that reaction now a little too tough a little too black but that's a guess I just don't know it's arson really it seems to me just wants to work but at the same time there is something in him that drives him to alienate the people with the money perhaps there is a subconscious streak that makes him resent that unlike a painter who if he had to could work in a supermarket bagging groceries and earned the money to buy paints that as a director he cannot do that he must somehow persuade his studio to give him the money and perhaps on some subconscious level Orson has never been able to accept this I cannot believe that he would not have been more successful than he has been at getting them to give him the money to make films there is a a myth in the film community for example that arson is an unreliable director that he is profligate with no disrespect to directors like Mike Nichols and Michael Jimmy no and Spielberg and Coppola Orson hasn't spent as much money in all the films he has made in his life as they have wasted in overreach on any one film and this is a simple statement of fact and I dare say they would subscribe to it Touch of Evil not a great film but certainly one marked with patches of brilliance was shot on the shortest schedule I ever worked on and it came in on schedule and slightly over budget the budget was less than a million dollars was it it also um so much of it gives very little room for maneuver I mean that the famous opening shot is one shot with Chapman burrows he didn't did he cover himself no no we spent all night shooting that shot if indeed if you look in the printed take you can see the touches of dawn breaking on the horizon that was the last shot you were going together was it that only used the last time yes [Music] but the hard thing about that shot was the small park player who played the customs inspector at the very end of the shot kept blowing his lines which is one can understand he would see this vast entourage bearing down on him from two blocks away and finally whoreson said to him look I don't care if you forget the line he said just move your lips he said I begging you just don't say oh gee mr. wells I'm sorry but it is one of many remarkable strokes in that film you folks are American citizens yes of our viewers will know that because this is on film there are conversations that go on between rates between reloading and somebody said that Touch of Evil seemed very unreal and yet real and I corrected that statement said what I was trying to do was to make something which was unreal but true and I think that's the definition of the highest kind of theatricality the best kind and that's the kind of theatricality that can exist in films - as well as theater and I think because there is you know what is more unreal and stylized than Cagney it's a totally stylized unreal performance no human being ever behaved the way he does and every moment of Cagney the entire life in films is truths he never had a second that wasn't true now that's that's the he certainly was larger than life he did everything dangerously and you know as though we were playing in Madison Square Garden and it was always cinematically true but unreal but that's the difference I guess I think there's always that term for the viewer anyway that a kind of moral ambiguity about the characters in the the Quinlin yes character but although he's evolved well you know what Renoir said he said everyone has his reasons and that's that really sums it up you know there there's no villain who doesn't have his reasons and the bigger the villain the more interesting it becomes if you the further you explain his Villa de not then psychiatrically it's not because mama didn't love him but because because you humanize you no more the more human you make the monster the more interesting that the story must be it seems to me also Quinlan's instincts turn out to be right even though the methods that's right or wrong you see his method is totally wrong in my my position in the political or moral sense is completely anti Quinlin I'm absolutely on the side of Heston myself personally but playing Quinlin and having a character like that I had to make him a real person I've been trapped into a troopers of what I hope is a troopers a true monster because he was a successful cop using means which do work but which are simply against every every good instinct that we have in a democratic world he's everything we we hate but he isn't what we hate it's his method and yet he would never have got those people behind bars if he hadn't done it and it's that ambiguity which gives tension to a story you know that ambivalence rather you also allow him this this fantastic epitaph with the end yes yes well she was pretty good pretty good casting for that she was some kind of woman yeah it's it's her last great performance no doubt by Canada [Music] got another frog masterpiece [Laughter]

Channel: FilMagicians

Views: 310,089

Keywords: Orson Welles, interview, Touch of Evil, Charlton Heston, James Cagney, Jean Renoir, Leslie Megahey, Marlene Dietrich, documentary

Id: niMGXhS28YI

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2017