“Touch of Evil” – A Noir Tale of Fallen Justice
Reflections on Noir: A Dance Between Chaos and Survival
One of my favourite film genres is noir, and my absolute preference for accurately capturing noir aesthetics goes to Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil.
Noir, in itself, is an intensely “natural” film genre. Just as Pavlov discovered feeding reflexes through studying dogs, noir filmmakers uncovered the survival reflexes by studying people.
But unlike survival in an epic film or historical drama, in noir, the characters survive not in a natural environment but in a “progressive” society governed by strange laws. The entire noir aesthetic revolves around this fallen progress.
In Touch of Evil, this idea is delivered with striking sharpness. The film features two main characters: a Mexican cop and a sheriff. One is trying to save his wife while also hunting a murderer, while the other has already lost his wife to a criminal he failed to catch.
Thus, the first one preaches law and order, while the second only cares about catching the real criminal, knowing all too well how criminals skilfully use the law to evade justice. Both are fighting to survive as individuals.
The story takes place in a godforsaken American-Mexican border town, partially set in the desert, which further emphasises the isolation of the setting from the rest of the world.
Location plays a vital role in many noirs, and here it is highlighted by the division of the town into its Mexican and American sides, creating the essential noir effect of disorder and confusion. Moreover, a noir director always seeks a place where crime feels most natural, and as the main character says, “All border towns bring out the worst in a country.”
This sense of isolation creates the magic of noir – this confined space (a technique I also use in my writing) is underscored by the constant interplay of light and shadow, as well as the unnatural movement of the camera. The viewer becomes a lab assistant, observing the attempts of mice to survive, even though the outcome is already known.
What’s the outcome?
Neither good nor evil triumphs – survival instinct does. In one of the film’s most remarkable scenes, the sheriff has a conversation with an old acquaintance, a fortune teller:
– (he enters the room) What's my fortune? You've been reading the cards, haven't ya?
– I've been doing the accounts.
– Come on, read my future for me.
– You haven't got any.
– What do you mean?
– Your future is all used up.
In this brief dialogue lies the anthropology of noir: the magic of fortune-telling here is limited by balancing accounts, and the future is already spent.
In its shadow emerges another future – that of the other policeman, the Mexican. He’s not kinder or more just – he merely has a stronger survival instinct and more youth.
The “flawed” location, the isolation, the strange “choppy” shots, ominous motifs, the lack of a safe corner in the frame, the absence of law, and the constant motion of the plot – all these features make noir so anthropologically sharp as a genre.
We find these “cosy evil” vibrations in other legendary films. In The Third Man, set in post-war Vienna, a city controlled by several governments, the authorities are just as sinister as the criminals.
In the neo-noir The Last Seduction, the entire plot revolves around the law’s blindness to real, cunning evil, culminating in the film’s famous motto: “Most people have a dark side. She had nothing else.” The action also takes place in “small-town America,” from which everyone is trying to escape.
Most people have a dark side. She had nothing else.
But in Touch of Evil, we feel it not just as a plot device to stir the audience. We feel the entire mess, from which there’s no escape, as the irony of survival itself.
It’s well known that the director harshly criticised the film’s first version, which was made without his involvement. Beyond technical aspects, in his essay, he repeatedly emphasises the creation of loudness, noise, and the constant presence of a tense element in the relationships between all the characters.
Noir, through Welles' lens, is the unnatural noise of broken laws and meaningless existence. Even a “corrupt” policeman cannot make a living by selling himself for the sake of the law, as absurd as it sounds:
Don’t you think I could have been rich? A cop in my position. What do I have...after thirty years, a little turkey ranch – that’s all I got. A couple of acres.