In collaboration with the Telegraph Hill Centre, Deptford Cinema is presenting Touch of Evil as part of our #BreakingBorder season.

Written and directed by Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (1958) was his last Hollywood film, a classic film noir set in Tijuana on the Mexico / US Border.  Welles brutal proto-Trumpian police chief, Quinlan is pitted against Heston's upstanding Mexican Narcotics agent Vargas in a film that is part gangster, part political  thriller, part Shakespearean tragedy, accompanied by a raucous jazz and mariachi soundtrack.

Apart from writing the screenplay and directing, Welles himself played a monstrous, corrupt, racist police chief whose guiding philosophy was that the end always justified the means.  Vargas, a high ranking Mexican narcotics prosecutor on the other side of the border (which is remarkably porous by today's standards) is his foil, with a subplot involving his screen wife (Janet Leigh) and a gang of local hoods that allows the film to explore many of the themes that even more so now, in the age of ICE and Trump convulse the Mexican – US border today, but never in a way that presumes moral superiority or patronises the audience.  The film is book-ended by extraordinary opening and closing sequences that are a testament both to virtuoso film making and a rich narrative complexity.  A fitting swansong to a Hollywood career that Welles never returned to, nor wished to.

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles

Running time: 111 min

BBFC: 12

Pay as you can tickets are available using the ticket button.. Some tickets may be available at the door. Doors open at 3.30pm. Film at 4.00pm.

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