Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Orson Welles

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”
—Orson Welles

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Sometimes I’ll watch an old movie on television and, once in a while, one of mine, such as April Showers (’48) will come on and I’ll watch it. And you know something? I’m always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.”
—Ann Sothern

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s: Touch of Evil

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Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, 1958.
Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, 1958.

We continue our survey of the twenty greatest movies of the 1950s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For a listing of the greatest movies of the 20s and 30s click here.

17. Touch of Evil, 1958

In one of the most effective opening sequences ever filmed, the camera focuses in close-up on a bomb being primed and placed in the trunk of a car. The camera pulls back, cranes up, and follows the car down the seedy strip of a Mexican-American bordertown. Soon, the camera powers down to eye level and picks up a strolling couple, newlyweds Mike and Susan Vargas (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh). He’s a Mexican drug enforcement official.

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