The opening sequence of Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, which is a tracking shot lasting three minutes, is able to show the four modes of discourse, namely descriptive, expository, argumentative and narrative, as regards to the film.
The scene in the clip is shot on location in the night, with distant buildings in silhouette. Other than the lights from the headlamps of passing vehicles and the shops lining the streets, the entire scene is quite dim which reminds the audience that this is a Mexican border settlement, a town which may not inherit the infrastructural sophistication or technological glamour that a city has. The low lying buildings, which also serve as a contrast to a city’s landmark, indicate either economic backwardness or a small population. In the middle of a cross junction, there is also a man walking his goats and this offers a glimpse of the 1950s Mexican livestock culture. Finally, during the conversation the protagonist Vargas and his wife have with the border guards, the audience is able to see Customs and Immigration building in the background, which reinforces the image of the Mexican settlement at the edge of the country’s border.
The clip is able to suggest to the audience how the tracking shot is executed. The camera is hoisted by a crane and as it lifts, the audience sees the car from an elevated position and when the crane reclines, the camera then takes an extreme long and wide shot as the car drives onto the main road which appears far away from the audience’s perspective. The complex opening sequence of the film also illustrates how familiar the cinematographer must be with the location set, and is able to dextrously manoeuvre the crane so that the set does not interfere with the camera’s line or vision. This requires meticulous planning since subsequently, the crane lowers to the level of the characters on the streets, first with a long shot and finally a medium long shot as they speak to the border guards.
The predominance of darkness in this scene connotes the sinister atmosphere of the rest of the film – the audience often sees shadows (due to the lighting.) The fact that this clip opens with an unidentified man setting a time bomb and then planting it in the trunk of a car belonging to an unsuspecting man already implies subterfuge. This mood of suspense is further enhanced as this car gets in close proximity with Vargas and his wife at different points of the scene, and the audience wonders when the bomb will eventually explode and if any of the characters may even die. In this clip, the car is stopped a few times at traffic and we see surges of pedestrians occasionally – this exemplifies how the plot of the story will not be as straightforward as it seems, just as the car is unable to transit to the customs smoothly. Hence, one of the prominent arguments of this film is tension, which is accentuated in this opening sequence when the lady in the car is ignored by the officers when she complains she hears a ticking sound in her head.
This clip establishes the setting for the narrative of this film. The plot is propelled by the mystery that needs to be solved with the explosion of the car. The special attention paid to the protagonist Vargas and his wife, as well as the man and his paramour in the car, also signifies how the rest of the film will develop in terms of their relationships to one another. The moment when the car exploded just as Vargas is kissing his wife also serves as a foreboding of what will happen, an omen that Vargas is expressing romantic love and intimacy to his wife and yet for most of the film, he is actually separated from his wife.
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