Director: Orson Welles
Note: the cut of this movie raised some (58 pages) arguing from Welles, who disagreed with Universal Studios' final cut. Two versions longer than US' were released, one in 1976 (93 minutes) and the other in 1958 (112 minutes) in an attempt to restore O. Welles's original view of the film.
Summary
A bomb planted on a car on the Mexican border of the frontier explodes in the US, raising the interest of Miguel Vargas, an important drug inforcement official from Mexico.
| Charlton Eston impersonates Miguel "Mike" Vargas. His playing as Mexican is now a recurring joke amongst cineasts. |
As he investigates the exploding of that bomb, Vargas comes across the infamous detective Quinlan, who is both well reknowned for having always caught the criminals he seeked and reluctant to let Vargas wander on his field of investigation.
| Orson Welles as Captain Hank Quinlan |
Indeed, Quinlan seems to have planted sticks of dynamite in his suspect's bathroom to frame him. Vargas thus decides to investigate Quinlan's past and discovers that lots of his suspects appear to have been framed. To stop him from unveiling the truth, Quinlan decides to frame him by kidnapping and drugging Vargas's wife Susan, also abandonning in her room a man he previously strangled in the exact same way his own wife died.
Thus, Susan is imprisonned for murder. Furious, Vargas decides to gather proof of Quinlan's vilainy by having him confess on tape him with the help of Quinlan's righteous best friend Pete.
| Janet Leigh as Miguel's american wife Susan Vargas |
| Joseph Calleia as Pete Menzies |
However, Quinlan discovers the trick and shoots Pete, who eventually shoots him back.
It is ultimately revealed that Quinlan's intuition was right, and that the suspect he had recently framed for the implanting of the bomb was indeed guilty.
Personnal opinion
I wont lie, I wasn't very exited by the movie overall, but mainly because I'm used to more dynamic and more colorful movies.
However, the story is good, and I enjoyed the endind twist a lot. I also have to confess that what happens to Susan is scary (even though I still think that lot of the 50s ways of acting are weird and not realistic at all), and the suspens quite thrilling.
The character played by O. Welles, Quinlan, is absolutely impressive and overall plain scary, but also kinda sad; his sinking into madness and alcohol triggered by an eager thirst for justice and revenge over his wife's death is subtely depicted.
Although the movie is black and white, the plot isn't, and that's also very refreshing in such a dark atmosphere.
But what impressed me most, and what makes this movie inavoidable, is the 3 minutes 20 seconds tracking shot (in french "plan sequence") at the very beginning of the movie. Lots of directors try to compare with this amazing shot - which defies dimensions by going from left to right, from front to back, and then from back to front and right to left again - without any cuts even though there are so many actors and vehicules that could have ruin the take. And I won't even try to figure how the hell did Orson manage to have a camcorder take such a long, smooth, complicated trip in the skies and the streets without a bit of its machinery showing up.
Plain admirable.
The final words, from Marlene Dietrich (Tana): "He was some kind of a man" |
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