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Film Touch of Evil (1958)

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When Orson Welles left his last American masterpiece, Touch of Evil, to the edit-happy heads of Universal, his position was similar to that of a translated writer: his reputation hinged entirely on someone else's intelligence. Of course, the money-minded bigwigs misunderstood Welles' unusual film noir and their clean-cut version screened for the next 40 years. In 1998, however, the director's 58-page, edit-by-edit memo helped restore the film to its original, more ambiguous vision. A good-cop/bad-cop showdown (Charlton Heston's by-the-book Mexican vs a larger-than-life Welles) and Henry Mancini's jarring jazz score anchor the eccentric character study, which ends, fittingly, in an uneasy compromise.

– Jason Jude Chan