Orson Welles plays it big in noir masterpiece TOUCH OF EVIL, screening at the Rubin on June 14
TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, June 14, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org
A deeply affecting noir masterpiece, Touch of Evil is one of Orson Welles’s finest, and strangest, outings, as he nearly bursts through the frame as spectacularly dastardly police captain Hank Quinlan in this dark potboiler. A deliciously devious corrupt lawman, Quinlan is an enormous drunk who has no trouble breaking the rules to get his man. Charlton Heston took a lot of criticism for playing Mike Vargas, a Mexican drug enforcement agent newly married to beautiful blonde Susan (Janet Leigh), who soon finds herself menaced by a dangerous gang as a weak-kneed, pre-McCloud Dennis Weaver looks the other way. The film famously opens with a remarkable crane shot that goes on for more than three minutes, setting the stage like no other establishing shot in the history of cinema. And the final scene with Marlene Dietrich as sultry hooker Tana is a lulu as well, highlighted by one of the great all-time movie lines. What goes on in between is a lurid tale of murder and revenge filled with unexpected twists and turns, featuring appearances by such Welles regulars as Joseph Cotten, Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Calleia, and Ray Collins. There was a lot of hype surrounding the film when it was restored in 1998 to match Welles’s original desires, but the final product lives up to its billing. Touch of Evil is screening June 14 as part of the Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “The Flip Side,” held in conjunction with the same-named exhibition, which focuses on art and text on the back of Tibetan objects, and will be introduced by Welles’s oldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder. The series continues June 21 with Charles Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, introduced by silent-film historian and curator Ken Gordon, and concludes June 28 with Johnathan Lynn’s Clue, introduced by Au Revoir Simone member Annie Hart.