#48 – VERA CRUZ
”Ben Trane. I don't trust him. He likes people, and you can never count on a man like that.” - Joe Erinhttps://www.youtube.com/v/WMdfaMcg2as28 points on 2 of 13 lists - Highest Ranking: #7 (Charles Castle) Director: Robert Aldrich
Stars: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero
Subgenre: Western set in Mexico
Despite informing the look and swagger of ‘The Magnificent Seven’, the scope and violence of ‘The Wild Bunch’ and the arch cynicism of Sergio Leone’s soupy Spaghettios, ‘Vera Cruz’ is not as well remembered as many of its contemporaries. Perhaps it has to do with the departure from traditional western themes. - Adam Lee Davies, Time Out
Highly influential on much of Sam Peckinpah’s work, specifically The Wild Bunch, and many of the Italian Westerns made the following decade, Robert Aldrich’s deeply cynical and pessimistic Vera Cruz is one of the most entertaining and complex of the classic American Westerns. Burt Lancaster—who worked with Aldrich on Apache and later on Ulzana’s Raid—and Gary Cooper play a bandit and a mercenary, respectively, who get involved in a little gunrunning, gold thievery and romance down Mexico way. There are multiple double-crosses between Lancaster and Cooper, and Aldrich keeps things lively while always twisting the tension further. Lancaster’s terrifying sociopathic smile doesn’t convince anyone he’s on the side of good, unlike Cooper’s stubborn insistence to remain pure above all the backstabbing … until he doesn’t any longer. Released in 1954, Vera Cruz eagerly shook off the uncomplicated romanticism that typified so much of the genre up to that point, and anticipated the bloody cinematic mayhem to come. - Derek Hill, Paste
Trivia:For being made in the mid 1950s, this film has a quite fast cutting rate. In ninety minutes of action, it contains about one thousand one hundred thirty edits and other transitions. This equates to an average shot length of just under five seconds.
My Reflections:Castle to the rescue! Once again Charles helps get a film on the LoC. His list might have been the last, but it wasn’t the least. As the only other voter for this under-seen gem (from Robert Aldrich, who’s best known for
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), I was quite thrilled. Seriously, if you’re a fan of the type of Westerns mentioned above, I highly recommend this one.