hat the Welles character is corrupt, and as the two discuss strategy--a scene that is common to many suspense films of this type--their conversation is shot through the front window of the car being driven at a high rate of speed down a narrow alleyway. What might have been a static scene is given great energy and tension by this device. Similarly, the confrontation scene at the end is given a new energy with the use of radio transmitters that do not work right.
The long take that is central to the film, the one in the motel room, serves several purposes. For one thing, it recreates the crowding and interplay of characters that marks the search for evidence in a police investigation. For another, it heightens the sense of the viewer that something wrong has been done here when evidence is found in a box we just saw as being empty. Throughout the film, Welles serves both the conventions of the suspense genre in which he is working and a higher aesth
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