Vera Cruz (1954)

Simply A Masterpiece

A different way of telling a story

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In Mexico 1866, ex-Confederate officer and southern gentleman Ben Trane meets Joe Erin, a ruthless outlaw whose winning smile could be the last you'll ever see. After a close brush with Federal troops and a near-fatal first encounter with Erin's gang, Trane manages to get them hired as mercenaries for the Emperor Maximilian. Rebel factions led by General Ramirez have amassed a force of peasants to be reckoned with. Expressing deep concern for the safety of Countess Duvarre, the amiable Marquis Labordere briefs Trane and Erin's men they will be escorting the lady in a regal coach to the port city of Vera Cruz. Her coach could be attacked by Rebels. Trane is suspicious that something else besides the safety of the alluring countess is at stake.The two stars playing poles-apart characters is exactly what starts the fireworks. The intriguing plot, the double-crossing, sleazy, elegant, back-stabbing, playing-the-angles crew, all working amidst a major rebellion keeps you on your toes. Beautifully filmed western with a great climax!

In a time when Westerns were dominated by John Wayne and his moralistic, conservative and boring characters, the Western genre was rarely not boring. I always thought it was thanks to the Italian ('Spaghetti') Westerns that this all changed, but it actually began earlier.'Vera Cruz' is a rare non-moralistic American western; instead of the goody two-shoes Wayne rip-offs, it is filled with morally ambiguous characters. Ben Trane (Gary Cooper), a former Confederate soldier, and Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster), an outlaw, are just two of many who go to Mexico to fight in their revolution; but rather than helping the rebels free their country, they strike a deal with Emperor Maximilian to escort a countess all the way to Vera Cruz. That is what made the Italian Westerns so good. The characters are fighting not for an idealistic protection of 'freedom' or whatever John Wayne would have used to justify it, but for pure gold and money. They fight for themselves, and themselves ONLY, no matter if their side is 'right' or 'wrong'. They are not above double-crossing others, even their 'friends', to help themselves.And believe me, there is a lot of double-crossing going around here.The casting is very good; Lancaster tends to be irritating with the way he keeps smiling and showing his teeth all the time, but acts well and Cooper is terrific as always. The supporting cast, with includes a equally terrific Cesar Romero and the then-unknowns Charles Bronson and Ernest Borgnine, is very good. The actors all actually look their part, another characteristic Italian westerns got from here.Unlike them, though, 'Vera Cruz' is not slow. It does not take its time to bask in the excellent scenery (which is as good as those of some Sergio Leone's films, for example), and moves toward the action every time its possible. For its time, it's surprisingly violent and realistically so; again, not like Wayne's westerns.An excellent western that influenced the Italian ones from the decade after, 'Vera Cruz' is exactly what American westerns should have been. It still needed a bit more polishing, something Sergio Leone and his contemporaries did masterfully, but it is still one of the best westerns I've ever seen.

First and foremost the technicolor was a smart choice for the film because it made the environment more realistic and beautiful. It made me wonder how amazing the movie could look in HD. Black and white would have done the film an injustice. The camera was placed in all of the right places and really captured some amazing things. There were high up shots that would capture the wide area of land that they were working with. It looked strikingly authentic. Especially when the camera is put up on a pyramid like foundation. Another time was when the camera was put way back behind an arch during the ball, i noticed it because it was such a different take on what was happening. A lot of the scenes looked very organized and planned out. As the characters would ride by with their horses they were very aligned with what ever was around them . It was nice not to just have to focus on the characters through it all and really take in that they were traveling. The Mexican cultural elements was one of my favorite things because not only does it make the movie more enjoyable to watch it made the movie more well rounded.

Back in the 1930s, we had numerous trashy B-Westerns. Then in the 40s the format returned to the serious "A" bracket. By the 1950s the game had been raised even further, and we had sophisticated Oscar-winning Westerns such as High Noon and Shane. It was inevitable there would be some fall-out – some mishmash of high budgets and low values. Say hello to the over-the-top pyrotechnics and shoot-'em-up sensibilities of 1954's Vera Cruz.Let me stress that Vera Cruz is no throwaway cheapie. If half the budget was spent on explosives and sombrero-sporting extras, the other half was spent on securing A-list leading men. It is odd to see such able and prestigious performers as Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster plodding their way through a leaden script that is one trite excuse for a shoot-out after another. And yet they are by no means miscast. Cooper, with his laconic and world-weary manner is the ideal man-with-a-troubled-past, and he brings a depth and intelligence to the character that is not there in the screenplay. Lancaster is simply fun to watch, with his manly swagger and predatory grin – a clever actor having fun with a lightweight role.This was an early assignment for director Robert Aldrich. Aldrich was always something of a technical show-off, and at this early stage he displays far more showy technique than careful thought. Vera Cruz is full of needless high angles, low angles and other "artsy" shots. While Aldrich would later make a real craft out of oddball shot composition, making the weirdness of the image complement the twisted worlds he portrayed, here it comes across as nothing more than the indulgence of a young director looking to make his mark.However, it is during the action sequences that Aldrich's direction really comes to life. He composes the gunfights out of lots of little bursts – dynamic shots each of which neatly complements and outdoes the one before it. He also proving himself to be a master of giving an impression of violence, sidestepping the strict rules on graphicness that were in place at the time. For example, it would have been unthinkable in 1954 to show a man being shot in the face, and in fact you were not even allowed to show a gun being fired and a person being hit in the same shot. But when we cut from the countess shooting to a rebel falling back clutching at his face, we get all the savagery of the moment without a single glimpse of gore. It is Aldrich's inventive staging of the action, as well as the spot-on editing of Alan Crosland Jr. that makes little flashes of perfection out of the tense revolutionary ambush, a peasant prisoner being hunted like an animal and of course the beautifully extravagant finale.To aficionados of European exploitation cinema (which, incidentally, is where my interest in this glorious medium began), a lot of the trappings in Vera Cruz will doubtless be familiar. The dubious morality of the heroes, the gritty Mexican setting, the completely implausible feats of marksmanship, not to mention the ridiculously high body count – it is all a bit reminiscent of that iconic Italian sub-genre of the 1960s known as the Spaghetti Western. And this is no coincidence – for the films of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci et al were not anti-Westerns, they were more like hyper-Westerns, turning every cliché up to the max and stripping out all the twee niceties of the friendly cowboy flick. The Hollywood ancestors of Spaghetti Westerns are not the thought-provokers like High Noon, Shane or The Searchers, as is sometimes believed. No, their true predecessors are the frenzied no-brainers like Vera Cruz.