Tags
Language
Tags
<<
April 2024
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
31 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 1 2 3 4
  1. Home
  2. Movies

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: 28 Feb 2015 14:48:00
Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition]
2xDVD9 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 16:9 | 1:50:36, 1:48:48, 1:35:15 (see below) | 7,77 Gb + 8,18 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French | Cover + DVD Scans
Genre: Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller

Director: Orson Welles
Stars: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh

A wonderfully offhand genesis (Welles adopting and adapting a shelved Paul Monash script for B-king Albert Zugsmith without ever reading the novel by Whit Masterson it was based on) marked this brief and unexpected return to Hollywood film-making for Welles. And the result more than justified the arrogance of the gesture. A sweaty thriller conundrum on character and corruption, justice and the law, worship and betrayal, it plays havoc with moral ambiguities as self-righteous Mexican cop Heston goes up against Welles' monumental Hank Quinlan, the old-time detective of vast and wearied experience who goes by instinct, gets it right, but fabricates evidence to make his case. Set in the backwater border hell-hole of Los Robles, inhabited almost solely by patented Wellesian grotesques, it's shot to resemble a nightscape from Kafka.

IMDB - Top 250 #179 | DVDBeaver | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | Roger Ebert

Some movies become just as legendary for the stories behind their making as they do for what's actually on the screen. Be they big-time flops like Heaven's Gate or the product of creative strife, like the director vs. studio monkeyshines of Blade Runner or Brazil, fans are as versed in the behind-the-scenes lore as they are in the films themselves. No one short of maybe Terry Gilliam is nearly as dogged by this kind of gossip as Orson Welles. Consistently fired off of projects and chronically losing his way in the middle of production, Welles' filmography is far too sparse to be so troubled. One of his most famous studio butcherings occurred on his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, a movie that is still criminally absent from DVD shelves. He's already had a multi-disc compilation comparing various versions of another of his thrillers, Criterion's collection of Mr. Arkadin, and that has set the gold standard for what Welles' retrospectives should look like. Smartly, Universal has followed suit to give us the double-disc set of Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Made in 1957 and released in '58, Touch of Evil is some kind of movie. Welles was brought on as the film's director at the suggestion of its star, Charlton Heston, after Chuck had heard the directorless picture had scored the former enfant terrible as its villain. Folks who have seen Tim Burton's Ed Wood, a biopic of another director who had trouble realizing his various visions, might remember the scene where Ed meets Orson, and Orson scoffs at Universal demanding he cast Heston as a Mexican. It's a good moment, though not entirely accurate. It's one of the many myths busted by the exhaustive extras on this new 50th Anniversary DVD: Welles rewrote the script to make Heston's crusading vice officer a Mexican and his wife into a white American woman, switching the nationalities from Whit Masterson's original novel, Badge of Evil. His epic bullfight between a corrupt cop and an idealistic attorney wouldn't have worked any other way, not with the thematic depth he envisioned.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Touch of Evil is a grand, spiraling puzzle. Taking place over 48 hours, it moves at a rapid-fire pace, with story lines and motivations criss crossing over one another with just about every scene change. Welles envisioned the border town as a metaphor for a moral line in the sand. For his matador and his bull to cross back and forth over that line, they also end up crossing over lines of what is acceptable and even legal. Each side of the town is neither solely Mexico nor solely the U.S., but a gray area that makes how a man operates appear murky. Quinlan may be rotten, but he also believes in the guilt of every crook he frames; Vargas may claim to an ethical superiority, but he is not above bending his moral compass to get what he wants. As he tells the thug "Pancho" (Valentin de Vargas) when he's been pushed too far, "Listen, I'm no cop now. I'm a husband!"

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Welles' plot is one of multiple layers, each one contingent on the one beneath it. Thus, when the studio released a cut of the movie to test audiences that had not been approved by the director, he had cause to react. Now dubbed the "Preview Version," it was actually believed to be the director's cut of Touch of Evil when it was discovered in the 1970s. The truth is, there is no approved director's cut, Welles never got to edit the picture to his satisfaction. This 1-hour-and-49-minute version, released here as part of DVD 2, was actually so hated by Welles, he fired off a 58-page memo to Universal asking for specific changes to be made before Touch of Evil was commercially released. The studio chose to largely ignore Welles' demands, and they also chose not to let the director back into the editing room. They did, however, cut the movie down to 1-hour-and-36-minutes for the "Theatrical Version," which is also on DVD 2.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

The major difference between the first edit and the released version involve shuffling some material around and dropping some major scenes that add a lot to character and plot elements within the story–most notably, a lot of the material with Quinlan's sidekick, Pete (Joseph Calleia), particularly his explanations about Quinlan's bum leg and his picking up Grandi when the crime boss is spotted trailing him when he's taking Susie to a new hotel. Both cuts feature the Henry Mancini score that Welles would have preferred be traded for source audio, and they also dismantle the director's complicated montage jumping between the first crime scene and Grandi and Pancho targeting Susie early in the picture.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

I actually like the theatrical version, though a lot of that is nostalgia. It's how I best remember the picture, having seen this cut of Touch of Evil multiple times before there was ever a second option. The Mancini music over the top of the legendary 3-and-half-minute tracking shot that opens the movie adds a jazzy zip to the scene that is not without its virtues. That said, when producer Rick Schmidlin, editor and audio whiz Walter Murch, and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum sat down and reconstructed the movie using Welles' memo as a guide and released it as the "Restored Version" in 1998, its superiority was immediately apparent.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Orson Welles was a virtuoso storyteller. His instinct for what made a tale tick was on par with Quinlan's bum leg for ferreting out bad guys. The way he saw Touch of Evil, and the way it appears in the restoration, is as a labyrinthine tower of secrets and lies that draws the audience into its maze through a confusing series of switch-ups that ultimately accumulate to reveal a large, intricate picture of corruption, racism, sexual politics, and personal morality. In its refurbished state, Touch of Evil is a breathless viewing experience. Welles' magical camerawork, shot by Russell Metty, is as meticulously designed as his plotting, the construction of each scene and how it flows being inextricable from the information it is meant to impart. Thus, it must have been heartbreaking for the great genius to watch the studio strip the film down and treat it as a standard crime picture where the only thing that mattered was that the right guy died in the end. The movie failed on its initial release, though it gained a solid reputation over time, one that only increased when the restoration showed how much more Touch of Evil could have been. Vindication came far too late for Welles to appreciate it, but it came all the same.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Which, again, puts the story of the movie out in front of the movie itself, a situation that is quickly remedied once you view Touch of Evil for yourself. It's a marvelous motion picture, full of fantastic performances. Welles, Tamiroff, and Heston make for amazing sparring partners, and Janet Leigh and Marlene Dietrich, in a cameo as a gypsy fortune teller who may have been Quinlan's former lover, serve as parallel but opposing female forces, one not having seen enough of life and thus under threat, the other having seen too much and thus untouchable. I must also mention Dennis Weaver's off-kilter performance in the role of the mentally askew hotel manager. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but with his stuttering speech and manic body language, he's hard to forget.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Just as all of Touch of Evil is hard to forget. It's a movie you'll want to start over again the moment it finishes, even as its famous last lines, as delivered by Dietrich, still ring in your ears. It was actually a pleasure to watch all three versions of the movie over the course of the last three days, each one revealing something different, and each time the quality of the filmmaking shining through no matter how hard the powers that be tried to blot it out. I always lamented not having the theatrical cut when the initial DVD was released, even going so far as to hang on to an old VHS copy. Thank goodness Universal decided to finally do right by this film and give it the birthday celebration the occasion calls for. The Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition isn't just a present to the production to honor its half-century of entertaining, but it's a fantastic gift to film fans who have been patiently waiting to get the entire story.
DVDtalk
Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]

Special Features:
Disc 1:
- Restored Version: Re-edited in 1998, this definitive cut of the film is restored to Orson Welles' vision (1:50:36)
- Commentary (Restored Version) with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and producer Rick Schmidlin
- Commentary (Restored Version) with producer Rick Schmidlin
- Bringing Evil to Life featurette (20:59, 4:3)
- Evil Lost and Found featurette (17:05, 4:3)
- Theatrical Trailer – (2:10, 4:3)

Disc 2:
- Theatrical Version: This original version of the film was seen by U.S. audiences when it was released in theaters in 1958 ( 1:35:15)
- Preview Version: Created prior to the theatrical version, this cut of the film incorporates some of Orson Welles' requests and was discovered by Universal in 1976 (1:48:48)
- Commentary (Theatrical Version) with Film Critic F.X. Feeney
- Commentary (Preview Version) with Orson Welles historians Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore

Many Thanks to violator99

No More Mirrors, Please.

Just My Blog!


92B982D8315B3178BA000A10530268EE *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part01.rar
33D23B9FEFDA03ECD3D4FCE3A8CF9EDD *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part02.rar
2B9C19E2D940EBB81D0D8E0D949ECA83 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part03.rar
E1B534054B1184689F7BE4998AB9F203 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part04.rar
E7FEADCC9F725C8926D1710072F37DA7 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part05.rar
5FE52929E31A61FEFB45D37192F00804 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part06.rar
5F8419E276D81AA08E17F219E1FB303C *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part07.rar
5AAAC59D702C4D250B75C90390430CD7 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part08.rar
68F88D19478CF511BAB8EDC48123625D *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part09.rar
8E0AA07D99626FE95CF490746A0137D0 *ToucEvil.D1.avaxhome.part10.rar

81A92CC258827AAD565E6CC5AE6D52BD *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part01.rar
13E4BBB02D687636EBC19B0349A48928 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part02.rar
CF7B2042ED6CAA78BC4AA15AED109D65 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part03.rar
39640FEF38B9C3997472263CA613B1C5 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part04.rar
9C2368A52F600FB9373F792C9A1A0B13 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part05.rar
0D27B065A02FCB57EB4FC2EAA103F3C6 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part06.rar
8340D20AC14DA7A3431BAFE3F22A5981 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part07.rar
2ECEAEA592DCC0BF245A411227B64C55 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part08.rar
D6102EB63F79A9EAC32A27C8E5FBCD31 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part09.rar
696B569DAF76985122A0DD5567350921 *ToucEvil.D2.avaxhome.part10.rar
Download:


pass: www.AvaxHome.ru

Interchangable links.
Download full movie Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] [ReUp]
Subtitles (from opensubtitles.org)
UPWARDS