Film Noir
Bordertown
Consensus: Corruption, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) even when you know someone is guilty you must still follow the proper legal procedures. IRONY: the outcome is opposite or near opposite of what you expect. For example, Quinlan’s downfall could have been avoided had he not ‘framed’ Sanchez, who was in fact guilty.
Opening shot is both famous for its technique and for its establishment of the plot. It was really long (continuous tracking shot before the bomb went off; before the development of the steadicam which was introduced in 1976 Rocky esp. training sequence when he runs up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art).
DRAMATIC IRONY: tension building device by which audience members are privy to knowledge that characters do not. “There is ticking in my head.”
THEME: undercurrent of racism; Quinlan is a racist cop, ‘You don’t talk like one, a Mexican I mean.’ ‘I don’t speak Mexican.’
Quinlan: has been planting evidence since [turning point] gets drunk/makes a deal or alliance with the mob boss Uncle Joe Grande. Q becomes brash and more aggressive when he drinks. [was on the wagon since wife was murdered] claims that strangulation is the perfect murder; wife was strangled and then he strangles Grande. But since he is intoxicated/drunk he leaves his cane at the crime scene. Mise en scene- the close up shot of the sign on the door, “Stop! Leave anything?”
Vargas (Mexican), the head of the Pan-American Narcotics task force, played by Charlton Heston (white dude)
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