Border Incident (1949)

October 28, 1949, release date

Directed by Anthony Mann

Screenplay by John C. Higgins

Based on a story by George Zuckerman

Music by André Previn

Edited by Conrad A. Nervig

Cinematography by John Alton

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

Alfonso Bedoya as Cuchillo

Teresa Celli as Maria Garcia

Charles McGraw as Jeff Amboy

José Torvay as Pocoloco

John Ridgely as Mr. Neley

Arthur Hunnicutt as Clayton Nordell

Sig Ruman as Hugo Wolfgang Ulrich

Jack Lambert as Chuck

Otto Waldis as Fritz

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

I saw clips from Border Incident when I took a class about film noir almost two years. I decided to see the whole film because of the current political climate. I wondered how the 1949 film would compare, for example, to the current debate about the usefulness of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. I discovered that the details and the narratives may have changed, but not much else has when it comes to immigration between the United States and Mexico.

The DVD version of Border Incident begins with the following announcement: “A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Silver Anniversary Picture,” which is written on what looks like a formal invitation on a silver platter. This announcement, combined with the upbeat music, made me think that maybe I had the wrong DVD. But no: The music and the tone change once the film starts, and I had no doubt that I was about to watch a film noir.

After the announcement and the MGM opening logo are the opening credits shown over shots of the desert and the landscape on the U.S.-Mexican border. The film cuts to an overhead shot of the All-American Canal, with following voice-over:

Here is the All-American Canal. It runs through the desert for miles along the California-Mexico border. A monument to the vision of man, the canal is the life-giving artery of water that feeds the vast farm empire of the Imperial Valley of Southern California. . . .

The film sounds like a documentary or a travelogue, and I had already learned that it uses the semidocumentary style. When the film cuts finally to Mexican agricultural workers (braceros) hoping for employment, viewers see them behind a double chain-link fence topped by razor wire. With the rather paternalistic tone of the voice-over, one could assume that in 1949, viewers were going to learn something about Mexican braceros. In fact, the narrator assures viewers that the fictional account that they are about to see is based on several real-life incidents.

Both U.S. and Mexican agents are assigned to solve a series of murders of illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexican border. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments plan to cooperate in solving the case. The rest of the film follows the agents’ undercover work as they infiltrate the world of human trafficking on the southern U.S. border. The two lead agents are Pablo Rodriguez, who works for the Mexican police force, and Jack Bearnes, who is the U.S. federal agent assigned to work with him.

(This blog post about Border Incident contains spoilers.)

So much about this film is noir, but the bleakness of the agents’ work solving the murders on the border really struck me. The investigation reveals that both Mexican and Americans are parties to the smuggling and to the murders, which was a bit of a surprise to me considering the tone of the voice-over narration that introduces the film. Americans on the U.S. side are responsible for Bearnes’s murder, one of the stars of the film and Pablo Rodriguez’s partner in the investigation.

I thought the suspense built up by the narrative and the camera work would mean that Bearnes would be saved; I even began to feel that the sequence was drawn out past its useful point in the narrative. His status as an undercover officer is discovered by one of the smugglers, who orders his execution. The suspense mounts as he’s escorted by two smugglers to a field at night by two smugglers assigned to kill him. Once in the field, Bearnes tries to escape by running away but is shot and rifle-butted. Then one of the smugglers gets on a tractor-drawn tiller because the plan is to make Bearnes’s murder look like “an accident” by driving over the body. But Bearnes is still alive and can see the tractor approaching. At this point especially, I thought cutting back and forth between the approaching tractor and Bearnes on the ground was overly long. But I was taken completely by surprise when he dies while Pablo Rodriguez and another bracero look on (they are trying to hide in an open agricultural field and cannot do anything about the murder because two smugglers are armed and ready to shoot).

The narrator returns at the end of the film to tell viewers that the government agents finally prevail and are rewarded for their work and their sacrifice. The return of the narrator is also a return to paternalism. The border is again made safe for the rich agricultural producers in California. The ending is self-serving: Migrant workers are still exploited in 1949 but now their exploitation is legal. Now they don’t have to compete with the “vultures,” as the smugglers are called by the narrator in the film. In the twenty-first century, we can still read news reports of slave labor and indentured servitude in many industries, including agriculture, so in that sense not much has changed.

Dana Polan provides the commentary on the DVD, and he makes several points about Border Incident being firmly rooted in the post–World War II period and in the beginning of the Cold war:

• Polan asks the questions that he thinks the film addresses: “What does it mean to be responsible for a crime?” “Even if you didn’t pull the trigger, are you still guilty if you ordered the killing?” The film raises issues of guilt and responsibility at a time when the Nuremberg trials had finished fairly recently: on October 1, 1946.

• Hugo Wolfgang Ulrich works on the Mexican side. He is played by a German actor. After World War II, many Nazis escaped and relocated to South America with new identities. Hugo’s place in Mexico is unexplained.

• It is implied that the criminals are organized, like an army. They’re even more evil because they use technology and techniques they could have learned in the war: communicating by radio, driving trucks, using firearms.

• The film also shows what people are capable of doing to each other, which is a reflection of postwar sensibilities. The postwar world involves torture (of Bearnes by the Mexican smugglers, with Hugo overseeing), criminality, murder, labor exploitation. War experiences showed Americans how cheap life could be, how quickly death could come.

• All the clichés and film traditions lead viewers to believe Bearnes will be saved because he is a character that viewers learn to care about. Bearnes is even wearing a leather jacket that is reminiscent of flyboys, heroes of the war. Polan tells viewers, “The old dream factory [MGM] is now giving us nightmares.”

• An implicit subtopic of Border Incident is that people must take on social responsibility to fight criminality and corruption, of course, with the guidance of government agents. Pablo Rodriguez is a bit paternalistic, but he has to call on another bracero, Juan Garcia, for help to save his life at the end of the film. The braceros (ordinary citizens) come together to take action; they become a collective force as the movie progresses. Bit by bit, they come to understand their exploitation.

• The filmmakers were wary of emphasizing socialist themes because Congress was investigating communism in the United States, and the film industry had already been a target.

Polan’s commentary is in many ways a history lesson, one that I enjoyed and that made me appreciate the film all the more. He doesn’t believe that Border Incident is a true film noir; he thinks of it as a police procedural. But I disagree partially with his assessment: I don’t see why the film can’t be both film noir and police procedural.

The world portrayed in Border Incident is extremely bleak: a war on crime in every sense of the word war. It’s a great story and well worth seeing.