I’ve never been a fan of Charlton Heston. He was never a very good actor. And his macho gun-toting politics represents all that is worst inAmerica.
But I do have a funny story about him. The Welles film, Touch of Evil, is one of my favorite films. I taught it for a number of years in my Politics and Film class at UNC Charlotte. Heston gave one of his best performances as Miguel “Mike” Sanchez, the presumed hero of the film. Sanchez, it turns, is a far more morally ambiguous character than one recognizes at first. Indeed, the one of the charms of the film is that one’ judgments of both Heston’s character and and the one played by Welles himself as well as one’s view of ethnic conflict itself are called into question in the film,
One year, one of my best and favorite students in the class was a member of the Republican club. (Yes we had many Republican students at UNCC. And many them were good students and became friends of mine.)
This student had the honor of picking Heston up at the airport for a speaking engagement in Charlotte. So the student got to chatting with Heston about Touch of Evil. Heston talked about it with pride and the understanding that this one of his best performances. But as the student started talking about the moral ambiguities of Miguel Sanchez, Heston became indignant. He thought that Sanchez was the up and up hero of the film and totally rejected my student’s (and my own) interpretation.
My student rushed back to report this to me and he laughingly drew the appropriate conclusion: Heston gave such a great performance precisely because he misunderstood the film. He portrayed a man who was blind to his own flaws and limitations so well precisely because Heston could not see those flaws and limitations in the character. An interesting twist on method acting, no?
Nor, I think, could Heston see them in himself. But that’s another story.