Orson Welles

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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