Orson Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL and the Gnarly Dynamics of the Border

No film (excuse the hyperbole), no film figures the border better than Orson Welles's Touch of Evil. "Figures" requires italics in the sentence previous (and scare-quotes here) as the verb is dynamically problematic--Welles figures, that is, depicts the border; he "figures it out"; but also, and, perhaps, most importantly, he figures it cinematically, that is, he translates the Mexico/U.S. border into a movie artifact, a semiotic/semantic conundrum that is every bit as complex as the real deal. At least, that is my thesis in Tex[t]-Mex--that and outing Stephen Heath (to whom I owe unpayable intellectual debts), outing Heath's problematic relationship to "Mexicans" and Mexicans. But enough writing, spy with me again the memorable, infamous opening sequence of Touch of Evil--this from the "restored" 2000 version of the 1958 classic: