Thirst for Evil is one of those masterpieces that make you believe in cinema a little more. Superb technique, perverse for his imagination, his audacity, his total and absolute efficiency. Perplexed with eyes like plates, the 95 minutes of black and white is best enjoyed in a high school classroom. So I remember her, and I never get tired of seeing her, applauding, and getting excited.
For decades, filmmakers have paid tribute to this imposing film that Orson Welles shot in the 1950s. It's a rugged tale of corruption unfolding in the rickety shantytowns and motels of a sordid border city, where the honorable Mexican narcotics officer Charlton Heston and the degenerate American police officer Welles, clash over a murder whose jurisdiction is in dispute, while Janet Leigh becomes a puppet.
What could an insignificant thriller becomes, at Welles' hands. Immersed in a sinister atmosphere, the film still celebrates for its sequence shot of the beginning, three brilliant minutes in which the camera, perched on a crane, plummets down to the bustling night scene, while Mike and his blonde wife Susan cross to the United States for an ice-cream soda. With a boom, the honeymoon ends there.
In a matter of minutes, the cards of an evil and perverse game have been dealt, in which Dietrich is the most precious whore, and you end up hating the obsessive Welles, who takes on a disgusting psychopathic figure.
In short, a magnificent and incomparable, (although a thousand times imitated), the beginning of a series of daring and complex staging, with stylistic theatrical elements squeezed to the max. An almost hyperrealism in black and white photography. A soundtrack mix of Latin music, jazz and rock which gives you goose bumps and not stop. The final hunt is a delirium of visual exuberance, effects, and fatality so superb that it's almost chic.
