This film is very nearly very good. For much of its length, with the exception of a few over-simplistic chunks of philosophy, it's a taut, nerve-stretching thriller, culminating in a brutal twist; the whole plot has been taking place on borrowed time as the conspirators race to complete their work before the secret police can finish tracking them down, and it is all for nothing. They have miscalculated, not their timing, but their entire scheme, and there is nothing left but the shaming, anti-climactic scramble for survival. In 1940s Hollywood, we just know that they aren't going to get away with it... and with the lofty ideals shattered, it's no real surprise now when the escape plan fails and hero and heroine prepare to go down together in a hail of bullets against the forces of law and order.
But this isn't film noir, even though it has long since begun to look very much like one. In a gangster film, the characters wouldn't have got away with it -- but here, our heroes are brave revolutionaries fighting against a foreign dictator, and a 'deus ex machina' can step in to save the day in the form of a popular uprising that overthrows the government without their help (and conveniently preserves them from staining their hands with the blood of innocents in the atrocity planned).
Unfortunately, this ending is very weak; not necessarily in what happens, but in how it is handled. The only way I can see it working is as the darkest of ironies -- a final savage outburst of cosmic humour at their expense, to cap even the failure of the bomb plot on the whim of the victim's elderly sisters. Gilbert Roland's Guillermo (as ever, the most memorable), is the only one to set his finger on the heart of it: to die five minutes too soon is not grounds for canonization, it is a black joke. China's final sentimental speech about how her lover is not dead, but will live on in all the laughter and singing in the world, rings utterly false in comparison; as a would-be happy ending, it not only doesn't work but comes dangerously close to undermining the preceding scenes.
A bitter laugh in the face of the tricks of fate, or a howl of despair or defiance... either might have been pulled off as a convincing coda. The film could have been ended with a long shot of Ariete's burning body, the fulfilment -- too late -- of China's terrified dream. As it stands, however, after running at a fairly steady 8/10 for most of its length, the ending pulls it down sharply to no better than a 7 overall; a more effective finale might even have been able to push it up to a 9...
As mentioned, Gilbert Roland stands out from the other revolutionaries as Guillermo, the easy-going dockworker with a rough gift for words, and a jest and song for all eventualities. Jennifer Jones is surprisingly convincing in her smouldering hatred as the sister of a murdered student who joins the revolutionaries in her turn, and David Bond is memorable as Ramon, the intellectual whose conscience and fever eventually overcome him. John Garfield is somewhat nondescript as the American hero. Pedro Armendariz imbues the sinister Ariete, representing tyranny and corruption in person for the purposes of the film, with a sense of keen intelligence and threat that survives even his drunken collapse (and is aided by his resemblance to a Cuban Poirot!)
The script mainly resists the temptation to over-romanticise its characters, and does not shrink from the brutal realities of what they are planning, or from the necessity, for example, to silence the raving Ramon. The wordless scene in which the senators, one by one, vote through the dictator's latest decree under the unspoken herd-like pressure to conform is as bitter a critique of democratic form as any; and for a film made under the shadow of HUAC, the explicit endorsement of underground activities to overthrow a government is astonishing -- I can't help wondering if the unparalleled insistence throughout on stressing the year of the setting, 1933, was an attempt to concentrate attention on the fact that this was nominally a historical tale about the overthrow of a former corrupt Cuban regime, and not a commentary on the then-current one!
In its style, the film is largely reminiscent of Huston's "Asphalt Jungle" or "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", and of any of a dozen gangster/mob thrillers where a carefully-laid plan is unravelled by the flaws of the participants or the capricious hands of Fate (a.k.a. the Hays Code). There are a number of shots whose visual impact stays in the memory, and the music -- save, again, for a brassy triumphalism in the final scenes -- is evocative and appropriate. Ariete's remorseless stalking of his prey (does he suspect China or does he merely desire her?) is nail-biting in its persistence, and there is little let-up from the tension.
It's just a pity about that saccharine cop-out of an ending.
But this isn't film noir, even though it has long since begun to look very much like one. In a gangster film, the characters wouldn't have got away with it -- but here, our heroes are brave revolutionaries fighting against a foreign dictator, and a 'deus ex machina' can step in to save the day in the form of a popular uprising that overthrows the government without their help (and conveniently preserves them from staining their hands with the blood of innocents in the atrocity planned).
Unfortunately, this ending is very weak; not necessarily in what happens, but in how it is handled. The only way I can see it working is as the darkest of ironies -- a final savage outburst of cosmic humour at their expense, to cap even the failure of the bomb plot on the whim of the victim's elderly sisters. Gilbert Roland's Guillermo (as ever, the most memorable), is the only one to set his finger on the heart of it: to die five minutes too soon is not grounds for canonization, it is a black joke. China's final sentimental speech about how her lover is not dead, but will live on in all the laughter and singing in the world, rings utterly false in comparison; as a would-be happy ending, it not only doesn't work but comes dangerously close to undermining the preceding scenes.
A bitter laugh in the face of the tricks of fate, or a howl of despair or defiance... either might have been pulled off as a convincing coda. The film could have been ended with a long shot of Ariete's burning body, the fulfilment -- too late -- of China's terrified dream. As it stands, however, after running at a fairly steady 8/10 for most of its length, the ending pulls it down sharply to no better than a 7 overall; a more effective finale might even have been able to push it up to a 9...
As mentioned, Gilbert Roland stands out from the other revolutionaries as Guillermo, the easy-going dockworker with a rough gift for words, and a jest and song for all eventualities. Jennifer Jones is surprisingly convincing in her smouldering hatred as the sister of a murdered student who joins the revolutionaries in her turn, and David Bond is memorable as Ramon, the intellectual whose conscience and fever eventually overcome him. John Garfield is somewhat nondescript as the American hero. Pedro Armendariz imbues the sinister Ariete, representing tyranny and corruption in person for the purposes of the film, with a sense of keen intelligence and threat that survives even his drunken collapse (and is aided by his resemblance to a Cuban Poirot!)
The script mainly resists the temptation to over-romanticise its characters, and does not shrink from the brutal realities of what they are planning, or from the necessity, for example, to silence the raving Ramon. The wordless scene in which the senators, one by one, vote through the dictator's latest decree under the unspoken herd-like pressure to conform is as bitter a critique of democratic form as any; and for a film made under the shadow of HUAC, the explicit endorsement of underground activities to overthrow a government is astonishing -- I can't help wondering if the unparalleled insistence throughout on stressing the year of the setting, 1933, was an attempt to concentrate attention on the fact that this was nominally a historical tale about the overthrow of a former corrupt Cuban regime, and not a commentary on the then-current one!
In its style, the film is largely reminiscent of Huston's "Asphalt Jungle" or "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", and of any of a dozen gangster/mob thrillers where a carefully-laid plan is unravelled by the flaws of the participants or the capricious hands of Fate (a.k.a. the Hays Code). There are a number of shots whose visual impact stays in the memory, and the music -- save, again, for a brassy triumphalism in the final scenes -- is evocative and appropriate. Ariete's remorseless stalking of his prey (does he suspect China or does he merely desire her?) is nail-biting in its persistence, and there is little let-up from the tension.
It's just a pity about that saccharine cop-out of an ending.