This month’s pairing was the “Borgo di Marte Appassimento 2016” with the 1958 crime noir classic Touch of Evil. The recommended food pairing with this wine was pork, stews or spicy sausage as some of the selections. I made what I called Touch of Spice Mac & Cheese which was Kraft White American with Bacon Mac & Cheese, I then added a top layer of Pepper Jack cheese, some Conecuh sausage, some caramelized French fried onions and lastly some red pepper flakes. This came out quite well and complimented well with the wine which also went very well with the movie, I have come to find red blends do very will with Noir films.
The film Touch of Evil stars Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh as a recently married couple that are honeymooning on the US/Mexico border she is from stateside and he is from Mexico giving them the best of both worlds basically. Enjoying the night together on the way to get a chocolate shake their honeymoon is abruptly ended when a car explodes putting Heston’s Detective Vargas into the investigation which is led by Police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles). Vargas is a narcotics detective who before his honeymoon was on the trail of a drug kingpin that takes advantage of this honeymoon with Vargas’ wife in town and attempts to scare her into calling her husband off the trail. While this is happening to Janet Leigh, Vargas is growing more and more concerned with the tactics of Captain Quinlan that maybe this cop has gotten to where he is not by the cleanest of methods. When the Captain who needs to solve this bomb case steeps to trying to pin a drug and murder charge on Heston’s wife it will lead to an undercover operation for the truth.
Directed by Orson Welles you can see the mastery that Welles had for setting a shot. The opening tracking shot I was astonished by and later learned this was one of the earliest tracking shots and lengthiest ones at three and a half minutes. There was a disclaimer that came up as the DVD started that said the studio (Universal) had cut this film themselves and upon viewing it Welles was not happy and sent a rather lengthy memo to the studio asking for them to make certain edits to the film before releasing. Well it turns out after the film was wrapped and shortly into the editing process, Orson took off to Mexico to film another movie forcing the studio to cut the movie themselves. Janet Leigh also needed to stay away from motels she had an unfortunate stay at the Bate’s Motel and in the one she experiences a scare tactic from the Mexican drug family that had me a little unnerved and tense as we see her terrified on the bed.
I am not a large fan of Noir films, this one though I quite enjoyed and not just cause I had a few glasses of wine in me. Sometimes I have found that Noir movies had this habit of trying to over complicate the crimes and stories making it difficult to follow where this one is pretty straight forward and simple. Heston, Leigh and Welles all give terrific performances that had me wanting to watch if not for what happened to them, but just for their scenes which show why each of them was a Hollywood legend in their own right. I definitely recommend a late night watch of Touch of Evil to me Noir feels right when its late and the lights are out with just the movie playing. B.
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