Border Incident

Anthony Mann: Border Incident (US 1949). James Mitchell (Juan García) and Ricardo Montalban (Pablo Rodriguez). Cinematography: John Alton. Please click on the photo to expand it.

Book cover photo from the finale of Border Incident at the Canon de la Muerte : the march of the expendable illegal immigrants - in the valley of the shadow of death - towards the quicksands. Cinematography: John Alton. Natacha Pfeiffer & Laurent Van Eynde : Anthony Mann : Arpenter l'image, Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2019. 209 p. ISBN-13 978-2-7574-2452-0

Incident de frontière / Kuoleman raja / Dödsgränsen.

    Anthony Mann

États-Unis / 1949 / 96 min / 35 mm Copie unique / VOSTF

d'après John C. Higgins, George Zuckerman

Avec Ricardo Montalbán, Howard Da Silva, George Murphy.

    Loc: Border region between Mexico and California. Mexicali (Mexico), Calehico and El Centro (California).

    Finnish premiere: 23 Feb 1951.

    Rétrospective Anthony Mann

    Sous-titres français: Titra Film.

    Viewed at La Cinémathèque française, Salle Henri Langlois, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6, 27 March 2024.

La Cinémathèque française : " Souvent classé parmi les westerns de Mann, Incident de frontière n'a de commun avec le genre que le lieu de son action. Dans une vallée de l'Ouest, l'exploitation de la main-d'œuvre mexicaine est au cœur d'une intrigue policière. Inspiré d'authentiques faits divers, le film contient des séquences particulièrement cruelles. "

AA: A crime drama, a social exposé, a police procedural, an undercover cop thriller, an immigration tragedy, a gangster film, an anti-racist and pro-Mexican film, a film noir.

Anthony Mann's penultimate film noir is also his work of transition from crime thrillers to Westerns. Shot on the California-Mexico border, this is Mann's first film to reveal the magnificence of the landscape.

Border Incident is a tragedy of immigration, legal and illegal. It is a thriller about the exploitation of poor and helpless immigrant workers by criminal networks and big landowners.

The voice-of-authority narration introduces the official viewpoint of immigration professionals and border patrols. The film depicts Mexicans and Americans as equals. The governments of Mexico and the US agree on cooperation to expose illegal routes and methods of criminals. To achieve that, they engage two undercover agents, a Mexican, Pablo Rodriguez (Ricardo Montalban) and an American, Jack Bearnes (George Murphy). Their story is thrilling, because the criminals are clever and instantly expose Pablo by his soft hands, unsuitable for a bracero. The women especially seem instantly clairvoyant. In fact nobody believes that Pablo is a bracero, so he has to invent another cover story: he is a criminal on the run.

The story / screenplay by John C. Higgins and George Zuckerman is thrilling, and the casting is impressive. Ricardo Montalban expands his scope from Latin lovers to contemporary drama. Similarly, George Murphy diversifies his talent: known for romantic comedies, he now excels in the most horribly tragic performance of the picture. 

Anthony Mann seems to subscribe to Hitchcock's credo: "the better the villain, the better the picture". Howard Da Silva as the suave big landowner Owen Parkson is like Adolphe Menjou in The Tall Target: not a cardboard figure and all the more frightening for that. The whole cast, including Charles McGraw, Sig Ruman, Teresa Celli, Lita Baron and Arthur Hunnicutt, is interesting. There are no indifferent performances. The score, one of the earliest by André Previn, is original and engaging.

In his fourth collaboration with Mann, the cinematographer John Alton again works miracles on a budget, with expressive compositions in depth, daring lighting in the dark, revealing mirror shots, dynamic camera angles, intense close-ups, profile shots and two shots (see above). The aerial shots of irrigation canals and huge farms are epic. The crowd scenes of immigrants are full of life and despair. The keyword about Alton: illumination.

When both double agents are exposed, they are punished in scenes of extremely brutal violence. Jack Bearnes is beaten to pulp and ripped to shreds on a caterpillar with giant blades. The power balance in the criminal network shifts, and the top boss is the first to be disposed in the bottomless pit of the quicksands (in the kind of twist later inevitable for James Bond villains). Pablo follows the expendable immigrants to the ravine of death. They walk apathetically to the terminus like lambs to the slaughter. The death march evokes the Holocaust. Pablo incites the Mexicans to fight, is himself drowned but gets a last minute rescue. Mann and Alton convey the horror in cold fury.

There was heartfelt laughter in the audience when the voice-of-authority declares a happy end to the border unrest, thanks to God Almighty.

A "35 mm Copie unique" was announced, and obviously the print has been struck from a good source. It is clean, stable and complete. At 55 minutes the definition of light is good. Otherwise the visual quality is variable, usually in low contrast, without adjustment to changing requirements of definition between shots. The print does not do justice to John Alton. The art of the cinematography could be deduced but not experienced.