Murch's edit of Touch of Evil a "travesty" - Bright Lights After Dark Story

[Harvey Chartrand]

I refer you to "Why Murch's Touch of Evil Doesn't Make the Cut" at http://www.brightlightsfilm.blogspot.com/ (Bright Lights After Dark, the companion blog to the Bright Lights Film Journal).

This is one contrarian view that I agree with. Murch ruined the exciting opening sequences of Touch of Evil. Without the superimposed titles and Mancini's compelling theme music, the long tracking shot isn't half as gripping as it was in the earlier cuts.

[Tony]

But he was following Welles's memo!

[chipm]

I never did understand why the cropping was done....I would like to have a DVD of the Studio cuts for convenience. Did Criterion do a Laser Disc?

C.

[Store Hadji]

You can still find the uncropped fullscreen VHS version, probably through eBay.

I have many problems with the restored TOE, but my voice was always in the minority here.

[Tony]

Well, tell us!
:;):

Personally, I must agree that the Mancini music under the titles was very exciting, but is this just because it's what I'm used to, and the film actually works better without the music and titles?

[ToddBaesen]

It's interesting that many people don't like the opening shot in the TOUCH OF EVIL re-edit - without the original Mancini music and the credits. I think it simply doesen't work, and while Welles complained about it after the fact, he presumably never got to see how it would work in opening his own cut, and I also think he might have changed his mind about it when he saw how it played.

But Schmidlin and Murch certainly never called it "a director's cut" nor did Universal, who said it was "restored to Welles vision," which was fairly accurate, since they did follow Welles long memo. The point is, as re-edited by Walter Murch, the rest of the movie works beautifully. But it was actually Rick Schmidlin who decided on using the textless opening shot, with Murch simply providing the expertise to do it, so if you don't like the shot, I wouldn't place the blame on Murch. And although I think it works better with the titles and original music, it's still nice to have the alternate version to see the textless long take, even if it doesn't work.

The ideal solution is for Universal to make a deluxe three disc set, with Rick Schmidlin's commentary tracks from both Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston, and the "Reconstructing Evil" documentary.

[Store Hadji]

Yes, a Complete TOE box along the lines of Arkadin would be fab.

I posted my reservations about the Schmidlin/Murch cut a couple years ago. In short, I studied the complete memo, viewed the long version of the film and the new cut, and came up with some conclusions that surprised me.

Based solely on what I read and what I saw, I concluded that the long version was not the preview cut that Welles had viewed, but instead was one that Universal had reworked back in '58 to include several of the requests Welles had made. Read that memo and see how many of those changes had already been done. However, Universal then decided to drastically chop the film down and throw most of their rework in the dustbin.

As a result, there weren't many edits that Schmidlin/Murch actually did, and I had trouble with some of changes they made and some they didn't make. Off the top of my head, their changes were: 1) the titleless intro with the new sound montage, 2) the crosscutting between the Susan/Grande and Vargas/Quinlan scenes, 3) a quicker cut off of Susan's awkward closeup in the motel door, 4) reversing/extending the closeup of the dead Grande, 5) removing the shot of Joe Calleia looking defeated with his head on the table, 6) re-editing the exchange of looks between Quinlan and Tanja, and 7) re-editing the collapse of Quinlan into the muck to coincide with the closing of the tape recorder. That's not a lot of work to justify waving one's "restored to Orson Welles' original vision" flag. Compare that to Stefan's work on Arkadin or the nightmare Franco had to deal with on Quixote.

My biggest complaint involved the crosscutting in 2) for which Welles had specified the line where the cut should occur, but Schmidlin/Murch didn't cut it at that point. I seem to recall Schmidlin saying in an interview that they crosscut at precisely the right moment, and as I said a year or two ago, maybe they did, but it wasn't at the moment Welles requested. Personally, I dislike the crosscutting very much. I find it sloppy and confusing and wonder how it would play with the cut Welles requested. Perhaps I'll do it myself sometime so I can see.

Further, they didn't make a change Welles requested, namely removing the shot of Ray Collins when he says "you don't mean he's mixed up in this dope ring himself." Welles thought it was a bad cut going from the closeup of Ray to the subsequent two-shot of Quinlan and the DA. I'm still waiting for it to be removed in accordance with "Orson Welles' vision."

I too favour the use of the Mancini theme for the opening. I could do without the titles, but that music is too powerful not to use. I was very disappointed that they didn't at least use it for their extended restoration credit roll at the end. Instead they used some vague moody piece off the soundtrack cd.

Finally, I too find the widescreen matting to be just terrible. That TOE box should feature the new cut in fullframe, so we can again actually see what Russell Metty shot.

I'll chalk up any discrepancies to fuzzy memory, since it's been a chunk of time since I did that detective work.

[Roger Ryan]

I believe this may have been discussed on an earlier thread, but the edit Welles requested in the Grandi/Susan scene would not have worked with the material at hand because it would have been in the middle of a pan. It's quite possible that Welles was referring to different coverage of the scene when requesting the re-edit or that his idea just wasn't that good (having only seen the initial studio cut once, it's amazing how accurate he was with his suggestions, but he may have misjudged this one). I think Murch and Schmidlin did the next best thing in the crosscutting even though I'm not sure it was an improvement either.

Since the team really didn't alter the available long version of the film that much, I tend to think that using the opening shot without titles was a hook they could easily use to demonstrate that this re-edit was valid. Personally, I agree that the original Mancini music was good, but have never liked the credits on there. As someone pointed out, a first time viewer is going to know that the car won't blow up until the credits are complete, so the suspense is muted. Without credits, there is much more tension involved since the car bomb could conceivably go off at any time.

[Tony]

Wasn't the moniker "Restored to Welles's vision" added at the insistence of Beatrice, who objected to calling it the 'Director's cut', since there never was one? I know she got a legal injunction to prevent it from being shown at Cannes, and she also forced the removal of the commentary tracks as well as the documentary.

As for the opening, I would argue to keep both the credits as well as the music, since they are all part of the film being a cultural artifact from the 50s, and a "B" movie at that: there's a glorious, terrible sleaziness to the film, which is all added to by the music and the 50s credits.

[Kevin Loy]

As somebody who has only seen the 'restored' version of TOE, I'm perhaps not qualified to voice my opinion, but I think that retaining the credits would have considerably detracted from the opening shot. But then again, I must say that I am partial to having as few credits at the beginning of a film as possible, or even ignoring them completely (like Dreyer did...actually, I prefer having no credits at all). I haven't heard Mancini's score for that segment (unless it is what plays during the end credits), but I think Welles' idea for a 'natural' ambience is effective -- maybe not brilliant, but it sets the scene well enough, and that is really all it needs to do.

Actually, though, there is one thing that bothers me about the opening shot -- the "I hear this ticking in my head" line from the doomed passenger. I won't go as far as the reviewer to say that Welles was wrong for including this sort of thing, but it does feel a bit obvious to me in the film.

Outside of that, I can't call the film that I have seen a travesty. I do think of it as being a bit slight in contrast to the films that followed it (and the films that started off Welles' career as a director), but Welles' portrayal of Hank Quinlan is one of the best performances that he ever gave, as far as I'm concerned.

[Store Hadji]

Dude, find Mancini's main title theme. It doesn't have the insistence of Peter Gunn, but it's one of his great pieces of music.

No, it doesn't appear anywhere on the present dvd version. They failed to use it at the end.

I can't even watch the restored TOE because the matting is so poor. I can't tolerate it.

[Kevin Loy]

is it on the CD release of Mancini's score from a few years ago? There were some passages from the score that I really liked, so if it is on that release, I'll definitely pick it up.

[chipm]

I have it on Crime Jazz: Music in the First Degree CD along with many other masterpieces.

At Amazon here!

[Store Hadji]

Yeah, it's on the cd soundtrack release. Lot of nice Mancini stuff on there.

[Tony]

Thr Touch of Evil score is probaly the toughest score Mancini ever wrote: really masculine and dramatic, yet romantic as well. Actually, very un-Mancini.