Touch of Evil

After the most auspicious start possible to a filmmaking career (Citizen Kane, 1941), Orson Welles settled into a pattern whereby none of his subsequent work went smoothly. Following time spent in Europe, where he made films including Othello (1951), starring Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards, co-founders of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and his first patrons, Welles returned to Hollywood. Opening with a tracking shot that would be paid homage by Robert Altman’s _The Player _(1992), Touch Of Evil sees Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh caught up in police corruption in one of the last, best examples of film noir. Despite finishing on schedule and on budget, the almost inevitable studio interference saw Welles ousted during post-production. Guided by Welles’s own notes, Touch Of Evil is available here in a reconstructed version that best approximates the director’s original vision.