Charlton Heston and Orson Welles in a scene from Touch of Evil.
A new video essay, Behind the Edit: The Orson Welles Memo, offers a look at the 1958 film that was re-edited by Universal Pictures and the effort 40 years later to restore it.
In a 58-page memo, Welles urged changes that Universal ignored. In 1998, Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch followed the recommendations in that memo to create a movie far closer to Welles’ original vision.
The 17-minute essay delves into the difference made by Murch’s editing.
Many thanks to Joey Scoma of RocketJump Film School, who was kind enough to share his video essay with Wellesnet. (We urge you to check out https://school.rocketjump.com, an online community for filmmakers.
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