Border Incident
Encyclopedia : B : BO : BOR : Border Incident
Border Incident is a 1949 black-and-white film directed by Anthony Mann. The MGM film, considered film noir, was written by John C. Higgins and George Zuckerman.
The story concerns two agents, one Mexican and one American, who are tasked to stop the smuggling of Mexican migrant workers across the boarder to California. The two agents go undercover, one as a poor migrant.
Some memorable scenes in the dark, gritty film include a harrowing episode involving a plowing machine and a climactic shootout in a quicksand swamp. The film was shot by famed cinematographer John Alton who uses shadows and lighting effects to involve an audience despite the fact that the film was shot on a low budget.
Critical reaction
Film reviews of the movie today are mostly positive. Roger Westcombe writing on the web page [Big House Film] compares the film to classic film westerns: "Yet far from a typical Western’s sense of freedom, Border Incident shares with (director Mann's previous effort) T-Men that film’s inky, submerged visual quality. These are ‘wide’ but not ‘open’ spaces, as Alton’s beautifully registered grey-toned but grim visuals make the distant horizons as closed as the American border. The constant presence of vulnerable, innocent peasants adds a piquancy to Border Incident, raising the stakes from the destiny of a mere two police agents to that of an entire underclass."Cast
- Ricardo Montalban as Pablo Rodriguez
- George Murphy as Jack Bearnes
- Howard Da Silva as Owen Parkson
- James Mitchell as Juan Garcia
- Arnold Moss as Zopilote
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.