Lecture discussed social commentary wrapped up inside a traditional film genre. Specifically we talked about the work of Orson Welles and Touch of Evil (1958).
The short Fast Film (Virgil Widrich, 2003), showed the layers of a genre film, with good guys saving helpless women and evil, ugly bad guys in pursuit. The film pulled images from thousands of Hollywood movies and icons in its handmade animation. Genre films teach us to have expectations of characters, plot and even pacing. Although the notions are inspired from real life (good guy saves the day), traditional genre films often break it down to much simpler terms, ones we wish we had in real life.
The "film noir" section of the documentary Visions of Light (Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels 1992), describing the genre world that Touch of Evil operates in. Good and bad guys and women are more complex, "shady", reflecting the deeper layers of society more than a simple good vs bad genre film. They list Touch of Evil as the last film of the genre.
Orson Welles began working social commentary into his work at a young age in the 1930s, with an all-Black cast version of MacBeth re-interpreting the classic play while giving African-American actors all lead roles. With The Mercury Theater, he set the play Julius Caesar in fascist Italy. On radio, he staged a fake version of HG Wells' The War of the Worlds, successfully fooling most of the audience that it was a real Martian invasion, at the height of wartime fears of other cultures.
War of the Worlds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egudvdwtDIg
commentary on it: http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=294
With his first feature film, Citizen Kane (1942), Welles broke many technical rules of cinema, and continued a theme from Shakespeare, profiling a powerful, rich tyrant who becomes corrupt, lonely, and finally falls.
By the time he made Touch of Evil, Welles had also lost his power in Hollywood. But not because he was a tyrant, although he was at the "top" briefly. Rather because he spoke out against authority and refused to cooperate. Lead actor Charlton Heston used his power to get Welles the job. Welles reworked the script and fused his own commentary of racial tensions on the border into the film. Welles had a long standing battle with authorities on race relations, and used what he had seen in the real world to form characters and plot inside a film that appeared to be a standard mystery on the surface.
“Affadafit of Isaac Woodward” mp3: click here
“Orson Welles defends 17 Hispanic youths in The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Case (Zoot Suit)” article: http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=184
The film was re-edited by the studio to Welles' dismay. One step past the identity of the characters we see and experience in a film is the identity of the filmmaker. On the surface, we assume that what we see is exactly what the filmmaker and/or producers, financiers and crew, intended us to see. But we only see an end product, that is often reworked by many by the time it is onscreen, changing the original intent of the director, and especially of the writer. Welles often found this confrontation, doing the final editing of only three films in his life.
Marlene Deitrich, who says the film's final line "What does it matter what you say about people anyway", on winning awards and working with Welles: http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=283
Welles notes on widescreen processes, and seeing the filmmaker's intent through a troubled production of a film:
In 1998, with the discovery of a 1957 memo by Orson Welles on how to "fix" Touch of Evil, the film was re-worked to the memo as much as possible into the version we watch in class. Details here: http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=290
