Touch of Evil

Someone I was talking to about this movie said they couldn't enjoy it that much because it was super racist- I didn't think so then, and watching it again, I still don't. It's certainly odd to cast Charlton Heston as a Mexican, and the actual Mexicans portrayed aren't portrayed particularly positively, but they're mostly just types. A lot of them are caricatures, and somewhat embarrassing ones, admittedly, but it's more lazy than racist.

What stands out beyond that, however, is that the really horrid person in the movie is Welles' character, an enormous, repulsive, and incredibly bigoted good old boy. He's clever, charming in a boozy way, and comes off like a funhouse mirror image of a noir hero, and he's corrupt as all hell. The dynamic of the movie makes Heston's Vargas the straight arrow pitted against Welles' Quinlan, who knows better than to bother with rules and regulations. As Welles' character is the villain, all of his characteristics- and his casual racism, which leads him contemptuously to dismiss Heston and railroad innocent Mexicans in for crimes he doesn't particularly care if they committed is one of the most notable of these.

It's also got an interesting and relatively refreshing take on sexism. Janet Leigh is the put upon wife, who is exhausted of waiting around for her husband to get back from work- a detective fiction trope, and generally a misogynist one. She's endangered, too, and in the construction of the plot she's as helpless as any woman written purely as a pawn. On the other hand, she's rude, eloquent, and brooks little bullshit- she may be in an unfeminist position, but she reacts like a real person, not like a distressed damsel. Furthermore, one of the other noteworthy things about Quinlan is his habit of making cruel judgments about other people's sex lives, and invading their privacy; again, since Quinlan is evil, one can assume that his characteristics are evil, and the movie is therefore arguing for tolerance.

It has its flaws- if nothing else, a lot of it is basically b movie material- but where it can't get away from them, it undermines them. So basically, Touch of Evil: a good movie.