Touch Of Evil / The Lady From Shanghai

TOUCH OF EVIL, 1958, Universal, 111 min. Orson Welles’ hallucinatory, off-kilter masterwork stars Charlton Heston in one of his finest roles, as a Mexican policeman trapped on the wrong side of the border, where a corpulent, corrupt cop (Welles) tries to stop him from digging into the past. Janet Leigh co-stars as Heston’s newlywed wife, menaced by leather-clad Mercedes McCambridge and her gang of juvenile delinquents. Co-starring Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia. We’re screening the restored version, reconstructed in 1998 according to Welles’ original notes.

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, 1948, Columbia, 87 min. The camera is the star in one of director Orson Welles’ most phantasmagorical films, a dazzling noir thriller about a seaman, a crippled lawyer and his homicidal wife pursuing each other through a "bright, guilty world" of infidelity, deception and murder. The hall of mirrors climax is riveting. With Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane.