Touch of Evil Essay Example for Free

feeling of Evil EssayTouch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) assay to lift the stylish low-budget crime drama form with quality directing, writing, acting, cinematography, soundtrack, and locations, while maintaining the authentic film-noir motif. one(a) of the key elements of film-noir was steamy sexuality, and Touch of Evil exploited this genre feature enthusiastically with lurid and attractive characterizations and scenes of tawdry sexual tension.Touch of Evil takes place in a wall town amidst the USA and Mexico, representing the thin line separating two different cultures and realities. The lead character finds himself in a plight when a murder takes just as he and his bride cross the border. He struggles to deal with local officials without wrecking his honeymoon, but events conspire against him. The local Sheriff is dishonest, his wife is kidnapped by his enemies, and his murder investigation takes him into an underworld of human misery, corruption, and sleaze.In 1958, interracial relationships were socially unacceptable, perhaps even forbidden in certain sections of America. Hollywood generally avoided the idea until the controversial Guess Whos Coming to Dinner (1967, Stanley Kramer), almost a decade later. So when Touch of Evils opening scene presents a Hispanic man and a Caucasian women, a newly wed couple, it purposely introduces an element designed to produce audition anxiety.When Orson Welles character, Sheriff Quinlan, realizes that the characters portrayed by Charleton Heston as Miguel Vargas, a virile Mexican, and Janet Leigh as Suszie, a sexy American, are a honeymooning husband and wife, he snidely comments, She dont look Mexican. Earlier, the Mexican border guards addressed the same issue with similar disdain. These scenes realize interraciality as a socially unaccepted custom in the films universe and focuses the audiences attention and expectation of danger on the issue. The plot soon fulfills the expectation.Vargas, an honest an d incorruptible constabulary official, tries to help the local police solve a murder that he and Suzie witnessed as they crossed the border into Mexico in the open scene. In one scene of high sexual tension and fantasy Suzie, in seductive lingerie, in the privacy of her hotel room, has phone sex with her husband who has called her from a pay phone. A finesse man, adding a titillating voyeurism to the scene overhears the conversation.Matters are complicated when Suzie is kidnapped by criminals with a grudge against Vargas, and Vargas dedication to his prosecurial business and concern for his wife leave him with a dilemma of two separate crises both demanding him to take action. The jeopardize rise when Vargas becomes convinced that the local sheriff (Welles Quinlan) is corrupt and is framing an innocent man.Vargas tries several times to rescue Suzie, which endure and serve to incite the kidnappers to threaten Suzie with sexual degradation, and ultimately places her in even gre ater danger of existence murdered. The result of these events on top of the smoldering relationship between the main characters is a story that produces a story environment of smoldering sexuality that produces scenes rife with sexual anxiety.Sources consultedTouch of Evil http//www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311 retreived Oct. 16, 2007Ebert, Roger. review article of Touch of Evil September 13, 1998 http//rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980913/REVIEWS08/401010367/1023