Marty Jencius and Cindy Rotz cross the border into Orson Welles's fever-dream noir, where a car bomb, a crooked cop, and a studio recut collide in one of the most argued-over films in Hollywood history.
THE ESSENTIALS
Director: Orson Welles
Screenplay: Orson Welles, from the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson
Producer: Albert Zugsmith | Universal-International
Stars: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Dennis Weaver
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Music: Henry Mancini
Running time: 93 min (1958 release) / 111 min (1998 restoration)
Filmed in: Venice, California, standing in for the border town of Los Robles
Recognition: Top prize, 1958 Brussels World's Fair; National Film Registry (1993); Roger Ebert's Great Movies
TRIVIA
- Welles was hired only to act. Heston assumed Welles was directing, and producer Albert Zugsmith let the misunderstanding stand.
- The famous opening tracking shot runs about three and a half minutes and took all night. The final take was shot as dawn broke, and you can see the sky lightening.
- Welles opened day one with two quick close-ups to satisfy a studio spy, then ran an eleven-page setup until 7:40 p.m. and finished two days ahead of schedule.
- Welles wanted to shoot in Tijuana, but Mexican officials refused. In Venice, the oil derricks you see in the background were real, working wells.
- Heston later called his decision not to use a Hispanic accent as Vargas one of the biggest mistakes of his career.
- Welles wore about sixty pounds of padding, prosthetics, and a false nose to play Quinlan, a man twenty years his senior.
- Marlene Dietrich's role didn't exist when filming began. Welles called her the night before, she raided Paramount's wardrobe, and the studio learned she was in the film from the rushes.
- Mercedes McCambridge is in the movie because she happened to be having lunch with Welles. He cut her hair himself.
- Janet Leigh shot the film with a broken left arm, and she and Welles share exactly one scene, which she spends unconscious.
- The night manager was written for Dennis Weaver, and his performance later got him cast by Steven Spielberg in Duel.
- Universal cut about fifteen minutes and hired another director to shoot new scenes. Welles saw it once and wrote a 58-page memo. That memo guided Walter Murch's 1998 restoration.
- Godard and Truffaut were on the Brussels jury that gave it the top prize. The distribution chief who entered it without the studio's permission was fired after it won.
- Quinlan is never seen without his hat, though at one point his hat is seen without him.
- It was the last film Welles directed in the United States.
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