Cinematography (2)
Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (1958)
Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (1958)
- Life and Career of Orson Welles (1915-1986)
- Theater and radio
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Magnificent Ambersons fiasco (1942)
- Continuing difficulties in Hollywood (1940s)
- European exile (1950s onward)
- How Welles came to make Touch of Evil
- Welles' 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
- Susan and Vargas, USA and Mexico
- The couple in the car
- What relationship is established 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 the effect different from doing this in an edited series of shots?
Touch of Evil: Spaces and Shots
- The border between US and Mexico
- Town at night: clutter, noise
- Desert during the day: vast spaces, emptiness
- Apartment where Quinlan makes the arrest
- Hotel rooms where Susan is trapped
- Other scenes of confinement: jail cells, law archives, elevator
- Uncle Joe Grandi's murder: harsh lighting, neon light flashing on and off, etc.
- Tanya's place: soft lighting
- Oil wells
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"
- To what extent does Welles still perpetuate ethnic stereotypes, despite his denunciations of them?
- 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.
- Quinlan's boast of a personal "police state"
- Corruption vs. friendship (Quinlan and Menzies)
- Menzies loves and idolizes Quinlan...
- ...but is forced by his respect for the law to bust him
- Duty and betrayal ("that's the second bullet I stopped for you")
Touch of Evil: The Enigma of Character
- Oddness of various characters
- Stiffness of Charlton Heston's Vargas
- "Night man" at the hotel
- Tanya (Marlene Dietrich) as Chorus
- Enigma of Quinlan's character
- Corruption embodied by Welles' imposing bulk and 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)
- Impossibility of final judgment: "He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"
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)
Varieties of Shots: Camera Angles
- High angles (looking down at a scene)
- Low angles (looking up at a scene)
- Overhead shot or crane shot (from way above)
- Point-of-view shot (recreating the perspective of a character)
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 (refers to duration of shot; not to be confused with long shots)
- Reframing (in the course of a shot)
- Pan (the camera is not moved, but turns from side to side)
- Tilt (the camera is not moved, but turns up or down)
- Tracking (traveling) shot (the camera literally moves, usually on tracks)
- Dolly shot (a tracking shot in which the camera moves, on a wheeled dolly)
- Crane shot (the camera is off the ground, on a crane, and can move through three dimensions)
- Following shot: a traveling shot that follows a character
- Zoom-in and zoom-out (telephoto lens closes in on something in the distance, or the reverse)
- 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 later in the movie
- 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)