Please join us Thursday night for a fresh new look at an all-time film favorite ...
The free public film series THE SCREENING ROOM: CLASSICS, CROWD-PLEASERS AND NEGLECTED GEMS returns to the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library this week with the critically acclaimed “reconfiguration” of Orson Welles’ masterful 1958 thriller TOUCH OF EVIL.
Based on Whit Masterson’s pulp novel BADGE OF EVIL, the tense, suspenseful crime drama takes place in a seedy town on the Mexican border. The film focuses on the moral clash between a corrupt American police captain (Welles, who also directed and wrote the script) and a crusading Mexican narcotics officer (Charlton Heston) over an explosive, high-profile murder case.
A 50th anniversary screening of Touch of Evil will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, in the conference room of the library, 350 N. Wood Ave., downtown Florence.
In addition to Heston and Welles, the film’s cast includes Janet Leigh as Heston’s imperiled wife, plus Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia, Dennis Weaver, Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, Mercedes McCambridge, Mort Mills, Kenny Miller, Valentin de Vargas and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
TOUCH OF EVIL was produced by Universal Pictures and marked the Citizen Kane creator’s first studio feature as a Hollywood director in a decade. When the studio shot new sequences and edited the final cut without Welles’ involvement or approval, the director wrote a now-famous 58-page memo pleading for editing changes that he thought would salvage the film and make it more commercially viable. The studio ignored Welles’ request and released its own cut.
Four decades later, film critic, Welles scholar and Florence native Jonathan Rosenbaum (author of DISCOVERING ORSON WELLES, MIDNIGHT MOVIES and MOVING PICTURES: A LIFE AT THE MOVIES), preservation specialist Rick Schmidlin and Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch used Welles’ original memo to Universal studio executives as a road map for reconfiguring the film according to the director’s written instructions.
Thursday’s screening of TOUCH OF EVIL will be preceded by BRINGING EVIL TO LIFE, a 20-minute documentary on the film’s troubled but ultimately triumphant fifty-year history. The documentary includes interviews with cast members Heston, Leigh, Dennis Weaver and Valentin de Vargas, plus Rosenbaum, Schmidlin, Murch, former Welles associate Robert Wise and Welles protégé Peter Bogdanovich (director of TARGETS and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW).
November’s second SCREENING ROOM presentation at the library – Wise’s 1951 science-fiction classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL – will be shown at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23. The thought-provoking drama stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Billy Gray and Sam Jaffe.
The Screening Room series – sponsored by the library and Pillar of Fire – is hosted by film historian and Pillar of Fire founder Terry Pace, who teaches English at the University of North Alabama. All screenings are free and open to the public.
For more information, call the library at (256) 764-6564 or Pillar of Fire at (256) 366-4512, or e-mail pillaroffire@bellsouth.net.
“An old lady on Main Street last night picked up a shoe. The shoe had a foot in it. We’re gonna make you pay for that mess.” – Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) in TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)
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