When I heard that today is Zsa Zsa Gabor’s 96th birthday, I was motivated to finish my review of “A Touch of Evil,” Orson Welles’s fascinating swan song as a director. You can understand why this was the last film he was allowed to direct. Even in its restored version, it fails to follow through on the promise of that brilliant opening sequence with the bomb in the trunk of the Chrysler.
As I said, brilliant. But let’s get back to Zsa Zsa. Her little cameo epitomizes the problem I had with this film. I was taken out of the story by her brief appearance as a bordello mistress. A glamorous Hungarian in some seedy Mexican border town? Really? And some thought Eva was incongruous in “Green Acres!”
Dietrich was another
matter. You feel she belongs in such surroundings. You understand that she’s fallen on hard times since “Blue Angel” and you’re just happy to see her again, playing opposite Welles and smoking that Tiparillo. (Sorry, couldn’t resist an age-revealing allusion…)
That’s the thing: Dietrich is an audience-pleaser. Welles’s performance is superb in a depressing way. Dennis Weaver’s nervous night clerk at the eerily empty motel where poor Janet Leigh is terrorized puts Norman Bates to shame. But other name-brand actors are wasted in this picture. Janet Leigh, Mercedes McCambridge, Akim Tamiroff (as a Mexican?) and Charlton Heston (another alleged Mexican). Maybe auteur directors like Truffaut and Godard got a kick watching Welles show-off, but audiences were left in the cold, their needs for a coherent story unmet.
Anyhow, happy birthday, Zsa Zsa.
Deathless Prose 
It’s funny how Marlene Dietrich manages to look at home in those surroundings while Zsa Zsa Gabor looks (and sounds) out of place.
I remember admiring this film technically but being uncertain what to make of it. Some day I may review critical opinion on it. In the meantime, thanks for the reminders. Yes, even of cigarillos–I go back that far too.
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Don’t mention it. 😉
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