Orson Welles
L'Infernale Quinlan

LA RECENSIONE

"They’re trying to make me do a thriller. And they'd want Heston to play the Mexican" from the movie "Ed Wood"

Hang on. Hold on for films like this.

It happens that you've seen everything. It happens that you've devoured Hitchcock, De Palma too, let's not even talk about Coppola, Kubrick, Scorsese, Carpenter, and the singing company. It happens to think that by now... And yet... Poor naïve...

One of the most cited long takes in the history of cinema: a car with a bomb placed in the trunk, weaving through the traffic of a city on the USA-Mexico border, with the camera following it, but then it crosses a couple, Heston and Leigh, Vargas and Mrs. Vargas, he's Mexican, she's American, on their honeymoon, sure, but not for long, they cross the border, the car explodes, Vargas feels compelled, sends his wife to the hotel.

In the explosion, a local magnate has perished, his daughter arrives for identification, and there, like in a nightmare, a name begins to spread...

"Quinlan, Quinlan, Quinlan..." Who is the infernal Quinlan? It's him, Welles, emerging from the car, a sweaty white whale with the standard hat and raincoat, a cane for the lame leg, which he nonchalantly assigns as the seat of his sixth sense, and a court of miracles following him. Quinlan orders, does, undoes, gets away with it, finds the culprit of the explosion, accuses him, and to frame him he has two sticks of dynamite placed where Vargas had clearly seen nothing.

It's no longer a mystery, it's Quinlan versus Vargas, relentless, their respective women (one in Welles' head, the other actually kidnapped, drugged, and traumatized) the unmoved mover of the story. And in the meantime, Welles finds the time to put his epitaph in the mouth of his friend Dietrich, and the declaration of his debacle as an artist.

For me, among the two, three greatest films ever made, because it held me by the balls without a moment to breathe: because Welles is a son of a bitch, he and this city with vast spaces that allow him to do anything with the camera, he and this Quinlan, a genius and fascinating devil, he and (spoiler) the murder of Grandes, with this massive man moving in the shadows, this massive man who is an old, worn-out, lame drunkard, and because when Welles and Heston lock eyes, it seems like the film (the DVD or whatever it is) is about to blow up at any moment.

Masterpiece. You never stop learning.