Cinematography (2)
Orson Welles, Touch of Evil

Steven Shaviro
October 12, 2011

Life and Career of Orson Welles (1915-1986)

• Theater and radio
• "War of the Worlds" (Halloween, 1938)
• Welles comes to Hollywood
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons fiasco (1942)
• Continuing difficulties in Hollywood (1940s)
• European exile (from 1950s)
• How he came to make Touch of Evil
• Work for hire and late cinematic efforts

Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (1958): Style

• Sequence shots
• Deep space, deep focus (in place of editing)
• Extreme camera angles
• Simultaneous action on different planes
• Dark and cluttered sets
• Odd, disquieting details in nearly every scene

Touch of Evil: Opening Sequence Shot

• Multiple Actions
• Placing the bomb
• Street life
• The couple in the car
• Susan and Vargas, USA and Mexico
• What relationship between the two couples?
• Location: the border; customs; the town. Sequence shot emphasizes their interconnections
• Ambient sounds, multiple sources
• The kiss and the explosion
• How is effect different from an edited series of shots?

Touch of Evil: Spaces and Shots

• US/Mexico border
• Town at night: clutter, noise
• Desert at night: vast spaces, emptiness
• Apartment where Quinlan makes arrest
• Scenes of confinement: Susan's hotel rooms, jail cells, law archives, elevator
• Uncle Joe Grandi's murder: harsh lighting, neon light flashing on and off, etc.
• Tanya's place: soft lighting

Touch of Evil: Cinematic Expression

• Other sequence shots or long takes
• Use of deep focus (e.g. Vargas & Schwartz driving off into the desert)
• In contrast, some heavily edited sequences (e.g. tormenting of Susan)
• Expressive camera angles
• Low angle shots of Quinlan, emphasizing his bulk
• Susan awakens to sight of Grandi's corpse
• Oil wells and bridges in final sequence

Touch of Evil: Style and Themes

• Racism
• Quinlan's prejudice against Mexico and Mexicans
• Susan casually calls Grandi's man "Pancho"
• Rule of law vs. Solving the crime
• Vargas wants to enforce the law...
• ...while Quinlan wants to punish the guilty...
• ...even if it means framing them.
• Corruption vs. friendship (Quinlan and Menzies)
• Menzies loves and idolizes Quinlan...
• ...but is forced by his respect for the law to bust him
• "That's the second bullet I stopped for you"

Touch of Evil: The Enigma of Character

• Odd minor characters
• Enigma of Quinlan
• Corruption: imposing bulk & soft, fleshy face
• Lost love (unsolved murder of his wife)
• Alcoholism as escape, candy bars as substitute
• Desire for justice? or for revenge?
• Identification with murderer (strangulation)
• Unconscious guilt (cane left behind)
• "He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Varieties of Shots: Distance

• Extreme close-up (e.g., an eye fills the frame)
• Close-up (head, hands, feet, small object)
• Medium close-up (head and shoulders; often used in conversation scenes)
• Medium shot (figures from the waist up)
• Medium long shot (e.g., an entire body)
• Long shot (whole figures, together with the larger space and background containing them)
• Extreme long shot (human figures dwarfed by the background or landscape)

Extreme Close-Up

Close-Up

Medium Close-Up

Medium Shot

Medium Long Shot

Long Shot

Extreme Long Shot

Varieties of Shots: Camera Angles

Most shots are level with the person/object shown.
However, shots can also be taken from odd angles:

• High angles (looking down at a scene)
• Low angles (looking up at a scene)
• Overhead shot or crane shot (from way above)

The Strange Case of the First-Person Camera

Shots taken from the actual eyes of a character often seem strange or disturbing (Robert Montgomery, The Lady in the Lake (1946).

This is why first-person shots are often used in horror, to give the monster's viewpoint (Steven Spielberg, Jaws (1975).

Varieties of Shots: Focus, Color, etc.

• Focus
• Deep focus vs. shallow focus
• Orson Welles and deep focus
• Rack focus (or pulled focus): focus shifts in the course of the shot
• Color
• Intensity of color (e.g., are colors muted or bright?)
• Range of color (e.g., is a full spectrum used? or only a limited range of colors?)
• Balance of color (e.g., is the film color coordinated? or are there garish contrasts?)

The Moving Frame

• Long Takes (not to be confused with long shots)
• Reframing (in the course of a shot)
• Pan (camera is not moved, but turns from side to side)
• Tilt (camera is not moved, but turns up or down)
• Tracking (traveling) shot (camera moves, e.g. on tracks)
• Dolly shot (camera moves on wheeled dolly)
• Crane shot (camera on crane, 3D movement)
• Following shot: traveling shot that follows a character
• Zoom-in and zoom-out (with telephoto lens)
• Handheld shots (create an unsteady frame)

The Sequence Shot

• Combines a moving frame with a shot of long duration
• Opening of Touch of Evil; also, interrogation scene
• Sequence shot combined with first person POV: opening of Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
• Other elaborate and famous sequence shots
• Opening of The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
• Opening of Snake Eyes (Brian de Palma, 1998)
• Ray Liotta enters the restaurant in Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
• Ending of The Passenger (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
• Opening of JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechi, 2008)

Cinematography: Some Examples

• Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, France, 1959)
• Very few long shots or establishing shots
• Closeups on stolen items, instead of faces
• Moving camera follows items from hand to hand
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
• Sequences dominated by extreme close-ups
• Emotional intensity, more than dramatic action
• Andrei Roublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, 1966)
• Wide frame, horizontal movement, lingering on details
• Nearness and distance
• Spatial relations indicate movement in time