Rushed in this morning to catch Noir Alley, only
to find that Eddie Muller was presenting what is, in my opinion, one of the
silliest films ever produced in America: A Touch of Evil, or as I would name it, A
Touch of Stupidity. Oddly, it is now considered a classic. Why? I don’t
know. Oh, the acting is laudable, and the cinematography is magnificent. The
plot could have been made believable and understandable.
It’s just silly, that’s all. First of all,
Charlton Heston plays a Mexican police officer, with no trace of an accent,
married to an American wife a third his age. Janet Legh plays the wife, one of
the stupidest characters, imaginable. You know, the kind who, when warned that the
monster is waiting just ahead says, “I’m going anyway.”
Orson Wells plays an Alabama Sheriff transplanted
to a Texas border town. His only redeeming quality is that he thinks Marlene
Dietrich is hot. Somehow the film works Dennis Weaver into a scene so ludicrous
and “over the top” that it would have been used more appropriately in an acting
school to teach the art of burlesque.
The sheriff is fat and crooked of course.
Charlton Heston’s character is goodness personified,
of course.
Jane Leigh is sexy, of course.
Marlene Dietrich is voluptuous, of course.
Dennis Weaver’s character is … well I don’t know
what he is but he is the most of it that I’ve ever seen.
But, Charlton Heston a Mexican police officer?
That sounds like one of those film-killing character interpretations that they
used to let Marlon Brando get away with.
INHO opinion, this is all rather sad because of
the excellent individual work done. But, as the late Dr. Samuel Johnson observed, once a brilliant person has done something stupid, it is hard to take
them seriously again. Of course, Dr. Johnson said it much better than I.
I’m just left to wonder what people, many of whom are much more knowledgeable
than I, see in this film that allows it to overcome such a flawed premise. A classic?
It’s as if someone made a technically near-perfect
film, brilliantly acted, that can not rise above a ridiculous plot premise. Say
someone devised a plot in which an Army Ranger unit was stopped by the brass just
after scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day and helping to capture the German emplacements. Say Someone devised a plot whereby the unit was pulled from the
ongoing battle and sent to find and bring back a buck private, one buck private. Say the
private, upon being found, refuses the direct order of the Ranger captain to
come along and then gets most of the Ranger unit killed, including the Ranger
Captain, who had, a short time ago been minding his own business, which business was driving the Nazis from the
beaches at Normandy. Say the buck private, as an old man, is presented as a
goddam hero.
It’s plots like this that make me think I’m too
slow on the uptake to be a movie critic.
