Evidence that borders aren’t just a 21st-century hot button, 1949’s Border Incident is about the contentious human back and forth between Mexico and the USA. Every year workers cross the border to harvest the crops in California, an authoritative and majestic introductory shot of the All-American Canal tells us, all part of the Bracero Program to import a workforce to do the jobs Americans don’t want to do.
Braceros – from the Spanish for arms, because they’re manual workers – are a good thing, director Anthony Mann’s picture is at pains to point out. They only become a problem when they arrive in the USA illegally. Here, the picture is at even more pains to point out, uncontrolled migration isn’t the issue per se. It’s the effect on poor undocumented (and therefore unprotected) workers, who often wind up with their hard-earned dollars being stolen off them as they take the money back home. Some even end up dead in the appropriately named Canyon de la Muerte.
So the setting up of a joint venture between the American and Mexican governments to stop illegal migration is, keep hold of this thought, primarily for the good of those who “jump the fence” trying to evade the border patrol. It is a problem, one voice puts it, of “human suffering and injustice”.
Ricardo Montalban – yes, he wasn’t just the baddie in The Wrath of Khan – plays Pablo Rodriguez, the upright Mexican official working undercover to infiltrate the gangs, discover how they operate and blow the whistle. Shadowing Rodriguez on the American side is Jack Bearnes (George Murphy), representing the cavalry to be called if the going gets tough.
Murphy can be forgotten about. He’s a reassuring white face in a largely darker complexioned cast. This is Montalban’s film. A lithe and athletic man of action whose quick of thought and solidly principled, Rodriguez works his way up through the gangs of fixers who spirit Mexicans over the border, where they work for farmers only too willing to (under)pay for off-the-books labour.
All those open spaces and strong sunshine don’t sound like the basis for a film noir, but in the hands of Mann and his DP John Alton, that’s what this is. Mann emphasises crowded areas and people huddled together (in the back of trucks, for instance) to generate an urban feel. And Alton gives him low angles to suggest displacement and angst. The action often takes place at night, and one of the film’s real standouts is Alton’s night-time camerawork. Much has been made of the “day for night” stuff, which is any number of notches better than the usual. But Alton’s “night for night” shots are also really impressive, as is his “day for day” – but then that’s a given. He’s one of the masters of deep focus, which requires lots of light, and there’s plenty of both here.
He does like to drench is women in soft though and they tend to get the Madonna treatment, visually and thematically. The guys are a different matter. This is a film full of hard and ugly – sorry, strong – faces, with Montalban and, eventually James Garcia (as a migrant Rodriguez hooks up with on the way) notable exceptions.
A “you are there” sense is what Mann is after, from that strongly documentary opener – with earnest 1940s-style radio announcer voiceover – to a distinct lack of music. It’s all shot out on real desert locations, with just the occasional indoor sequence done in the studio.
Much to like, though it’s not all good. The Mexicans are a decent, pious and well mannered bunch – a bit anodyne. Occasionally Mann yields to cliché – Zopilote (Arnold Moss) and Cuchillo (Alfonso Bedoya) are Mexican comedy stereotypes. And things go a touch soft in the middle as Mann gets over-interested in the goings-on at the ranch of big white noise Owen Parkson (Howard Da Silva).
But all is redeemed by a finale that’s big and dramatic, back in the Canyon del Muerte where there is indeed quite a lot of death. Quicksand. Mann does it convincingly, which is to say gruesomely.
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
