Touch of Evil

Music by Henry Mancini

 

 

 

 

 

Along with the soundtrack for the TV series Peter Gunn, the music of Touch of Evil (1958) was responsible for highlighting the name of Henry Mancini on the film market.

Director Orson Welles personally guided Mancini for much Latin influence and that music, unlike traditional film music, should come from visible sources on the scene, such as radio or jukebox. So its heard that large amount of rocks and blues that accentuate the heavy ambience of the whole film. Set in Mexican border the drama is one of the most intense on displaying without retouching, marginalization and corruption and the soundtrack, quite varied, delivers the best delinquent rock'n'roll you ever heard on screen. The opening theme, Main Title, sensual and threatening, is great with its atmosphere of suspense and percussion led by bongos. The lightness of theme Susan is a jewel that shines alone on the whole and precedes what the composer would develop successfully in the 60. The track Background To Murder, a suite with seven minutes of variations on the main theme (with great performances on percussion), is one of the great moments of the composer and, by extension, of the film music. It is the theme used on the murder sequence of Joe Grande (Akim Tamiroff) in a magnificent progression of suspense in which the music probably (within the source music logic) comes from some external source, street or a bar. With its constant rhythmic tension and thematic variety, Touch of Evil also had importance in the insertion of jazz in writing for films.