Movie vera cruz movie#

Williams’ Lingering Survival of the Unfit (With Preamble)Ī circuitous and visceral visual metaphor for the physical labor it takes to immigrate, Stephanie J. There are millions of ways to ruin another country- Vera Cruz shows you one. Then there is Burt Lancaster’s big white teeth almost glowing from his dirt-smudged face, a dastardly American grin. If you are so inclined, watch Vera Cruz for: Nina (Sara Montiel), the undercover Juarista and Trane’s love interest who Aldrich presents as a femme fatale on a global scale, seducing Trane and symbolically seducing the US, making revolution alluring the Juaristas themselves, who are depicted with the same scrappy, radical fervor you see in, say, The Battle Of Algiers and the way Aldrich’s camera sprints after our “heroes” or glides across Mexico’s landscape occasionally caught up in its beauty, a respite from an unforgiving narrative. Gary Cooper, Sara Montiel, Denise Darcel and Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz (1954)

Movie vera cruz movie#

It’s supposed to be a film critic’s job to convince you to endure some classic, and I won’t exactly do that but look: There is a great deal to glean from Vera Cruz about current and past politics, and this movie does a better job smuggling in complex politics than most contemporary prestige pictures that straight tell all of us liberals what we want to hear about our cruel country.

Why you would go to to a theater and see Vera Cruz or most westerns like this-gruff, cruel, violent, and masculine (this one, complete with a rape scene that is choreographed more like a dance)-I do not know. Indeed, Vera Cruz ‘s characters get in it for the money and end up doing some broader political disruption here-the kind the United States still refuses to reckon with, as the neoliberal coup going on in Venezuela and the cruel sanctions imposed on Iran illustrate. Trane wears white and Erin wears black, which doesn’t mean too much in terms of “good guy” and “bad guy” because we learn Trane fought for the Confederacy and Erin for the Union and both team up and take cash from supporters of the French occupation of Mexico, assisting further attacks on Benito Juárez’s Juaristas. The bent-on-gain loners here are mercenaries Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) and Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster). They drifted South in small groups-and some came alone.” “Into this fight rode a handful of Americans-ex-soldiers, adventurers, criminals-all bent on gain. The Mexican people were struggling to rid themselves of their foreign Emperor-Maximilian,” a rustic, yellow font scrolling up the screen explains in the prologue.

“As the American Civil War ended, another war was just beginning. 1), its grim view of history and progress made immediately clear. Typical Western heroics are tempered with nods to paternal US intervention and CIA-style meddling in Robert Aldrich’s 1954 western Vera Cruz (screening at the Charles on July 27, 29, and Aug.