Touch of Evil again

I last wrote about "Touch of Evil" (1958) on August 11 and I keep thinking about it.

So I have to point out a couple of things:

Janet Leigh in that motel room in 1958: and I've never seen a reference to this in all the Hitchcock literature but, come on, when Hitchcock was casting Psycho (1960), he had to remember that image of Janet Leigh in her underwear opening that motel room door with all those crazy Mexicans running around.

And then there's that character played by Dennis Weaver (who is most famous as the star in the TV series, "McCloud"), the motel room night manager. I don't know my Shakespeare well enough, but it's been said that his character is lifted right out of a Shakespeare play. Remember, Welles knew his Shakespeare, so it's not an outrageous assertion, but I'd be interested in any parallels anyone can come up with. Remember, there's that night watchman Mike played in "Much Ado About Nothing"?

One of my favorite shots is: Charlton Heston, in the convertible, and it appears that the camera has been mounted right above the hood, so you get this great sense of motion, and the wind whipping around, and he's there, like a rock, right in the middle of this world.

This is a pure Film Noir shot. Among other things, Film Noir got rid of a lot of Hollywood camera trickery, like "day for night", and "process shots" out of car windows. You know the ones: the actors are riding in a fake car and you watch fake images out the windows in the background. So this shot must have been eye-opening to those who first saw in on screen: it's the real thing.

(And Sam Peckinpah remembered that shot when he made "The Getaway"1972.)