Touch of Evil, the Orson Welles film released in 1958 but not seen as the director wished until 1998, shuts the door on the era of classic noir. Set on the Mexican-American border, the film takes on many border issues still controversial today: drug trafficking, police corruption, sex tourism, racism and imperialism. Recent films like Sicario, Traffic and El Norte represent the border as a zone of terror, ultra-violence, human vulnerability and corruption of everything. Crime fiction, like border trilogies by Don Winslow and Cormac McCarthy, uses similar themes.
Welles’ noir tragedy takes place in Los Robles, a fictional Texas border town with pumping oil derricks looming over dusty streets of brothels, raunchy bars, third-rate hotels. The movie opens with what’s called the most famous tracking shot in the history of movies: a ticking bomb placed in the trunk of the luxury car of an affluent US businessman driving a Mexican woman he picked up through town to cross the border back into the US. Right away we see Welles’ first example of an ‘interracial’ relationship (as it was viewed in the 50s).
The marriage of Mexican prosecutor Vargas (Charlton Heston in ‘brown face’) with his blond Philadelphia bride Susie (Janet Leigh) provides a second interracial relationship, a mirror image of the first. Then there’s another between corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) and Tana (Marlene Dietrich), the fortune-teller (here with black hair) who reads his future, or lack of future, in the cards and tells him to stop eating candy bars. And yet another between the heiress daughter of the dead American businessman and a Mexican clerk. Mexicans and Americans drawn together by forbidden desire yet torn apart by border violence. Surely we’ve outgrown this border noir formula?
Touch of Evil displays a few shootings, a couple beatings, a strangulation murder and a gang sexual assault. That last is the most disturbing though it happens off screen and is weirdly ignored afterward by the affected characters. Much of the film’s impact comes from all the shadows and camera angles and other bits of directorial brilliance you can read tomes on from film aficionados. The plot explains Quinlan’s corruption as a reaction to the murder of his wife. Yet Vargas takes down Quinlan as a response to the rape and framing of his wife. So we have a story of men on the border turning to either crime or crime-fighting because of attacks on their womenfolk. Does the excuse work for both?
Here in our century Sicario (2015) follows a government task force seeking to bring down the head of a Mexican cartel but ends up revealing corruption and futility in the drug war. Like Touch of Evil it has an out-of-control law enforcement guy whose off-the-rails violence is explained as a reaction to the murder of his wife and daughter. The violence here is way more shocking than Touch of Evil but it’s filtered through the perspective of an ethical female main character.
Oliver Stone’s Savages, based on Don Winslow’s book of the same name, appeared in 2012. The plot follows two California marijuana growers, Ben and Chon, propositioned by a Mexican drug cartel to form a partnership. When they refuse, an enforcer gang of the cartel kidnaps their girlfriend, Ophelia. This film ends with one cartel leader thrown in jail while others step into the role so we have a similar message about the futility of the drug war. In 2012 investigative crime group InSight Crime published a response to Savages called “Oliver Stone Gets It Wrong on Mexico Drug War” where they accuse Stone of exaggerating the impossibility of countering drug trafficking. Stone responded saying the drug war has been a disaster and more people use illegal drugs today than ever before.
So our stories about the border grow more violent and amoral. No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers 2007 film based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel, asks this question. Sheriff Bell tells his cousin he feels overwhelmed by how violent things have become and wants to retire. His cousin argues the region has always been violent. Who’s right?
The border is a bigger flashpoint than it was in 1958 when Touch of Evil appeared, a period when the Bracero Program legalizing work permits for Mexican workers in the United States was in effect. Novels and films about the border have become more violent, often offering the same old tired excuses for why men go overboard. Meanwhile, Mexicans have paid a high price for the drug war – over 431,000 homicides since 2006 – but books and movies on this side of the border don’t tell their story. What do you think?
It does seem as though these border stories are excessively violent and too often American-centric. I think it's time to hear more about the "other side" and the toll this violence (and trafficking, drug issues, etc.) has taken on Mexican society, not just as a whole but the price paid by individuals who only wish to live their lives in peace. I"m not sure how well those stories would be received by those Americans who view Mexicans as "the other" (a violent, lustful, vengeful other at that) but those would be the very people who could benefit from hearing those stories.