Mexico’s fight to be independent of foreign rule in the 1860s provides the meat for the historical epic Juarez (without the accent), a lavish Hollywood production that crowds its scenes with tons of extras and rushes its best shots to get on with the story. Still, the film is a fascinating mix, and one that showcases a brilliant performance by Paul Muni as Benito Juárez, the Zapotec Indian who served two terms as president of Mexico. Eschewing the fussy mannerisms of his (nonetheless magnificent) Emile Zola (1937), Muni here is at his most concentrated and subtly inflected. Giving him a browned complexion and slick black hair, the makeup department has helped transform the actor into a facsimile of Juárez; but it is Muni’s own genius—and Muni (from Austria and, later, the Yiddish stage) is one of the few Hollywood actors to whom one can reasonably attribute genius—that achieves the subject’s craftily ironical nature and, as the VHS jacket puts it, “stoic resolve.” This was Muni’s last year at Warner Bros. before going independent (a move that undid his film career); and with his superlative, heartfelt acting in Edmund Goulding’s We Are Not Alone as well, he went out with a bang.
Adolf Hitler’s territorial mischief in Europe at the time of the film gave the film the following: its impetus, its opposition to Maximilian of Habsburg’s rule of Mexico, based on a phony plebiscite and backed by Louis Napoléon’s French troops, and its fierce support of Juárez’s revolutionary drive. The latter’s constitutional democracy, which scatters to the hills upon Maximilian’s arrival, is pitted against Maximilian’s aristocratic monarchy; but the real villain, of course, is Louis Napoléon, who connives to elude the application of the Monroe Doctrine to his appetite for Mexico. “You bourgeois Bonaparte!” Maximilian’s wife, Carlotta, shouts at the little tyrant at his court when he renegs on his treaty and begins withdrawing his army from Mexico, without whose support Maximilian will perish. Audiences in 1939 understood Carlotta’s insult as a knock at Hitler.
Director William Dieterle, working intelligently and industriously but with scant inspiration, must helm a divided film. The action shifts back and forth between Juárez, his generals and the impoverished Mexicans supporting him, on the one hand, and the hifalutin, elegant Maximilian and Carlotta, on the other. Excellent performances come from John Garfield as Juárez’s General Porfirio Díaz and Brian Aherne as Emperor Maximilian. Claude Rains is a loathsome hoot as Louis. Bette Davis rarely played devout women, but early on she is deeply moving as Carlotta, who cannot bear her husband a child. For me, however, Davis is close to ridiculous when Carlotta dissolves into insanity, her eyes popping and rolling. All in all, the Juárez material lends the film its greatest interest.
John Huston contributed to the Leftist script. Aeneas MacKenzie and Wolfgang Reinhardt also contributed.
A reminder: Benito Mussolini was named after Juárez by his socialist father. That kid just didn’t get it right.
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Tags: Bette Davis, Muni
This entry was posted on April 6, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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JUAREZ (William Dieterle, 1939)
Mexico’s fight to be independent of foreign rule in the 1860s provides the meat for the historical epic Juarez (without the accent), a lavish Hollywood production that crowds its scenes with tons of extras and rushes its best shots to get on with the story. Still, the film is a fascinating mix, and one that showcases a brilliant performance by Paul Muni as Benito Juárez, the Zapotec Indian who served two terms as president of Mexico. Eschewing the fussy mannerisms of his (nonetheless magnificent) Emile Zola (1937), Muni here is at his most concentrated and subtly inflected. Giving him a browned complexion and slick black hair, the makeup department has helped transform the actor into a facsimile of Juárez; but it is Muni’s own genius—and Muni (from Austria and, later, the Yiddish stage) is one of the few Hollywood actors to whom one can reasonably attribute genius—that achieves the subject’s craftily ironical nature and, as the VHS jacket puts it, “stoic resolve.” This was Muni’s last year at Warner Bros. before going independent (a move that undid his film career); and with his superlative, heartfelt acting in Edmund Goulding’s We Are Not Alone as well, he went out with a bang.
Adolf Hitler’s territorial mischief in Europe at the time of the film gave the film the following: its impetus, its opposition to Maximilian of Habsburg’s rule of Mexico, based on a phony plebiscite and backed by Louis Napoléon’s French troops, and its fierce support of Juárez’s revolutionary drive. The latter’s constitutional democracy, which scatters to the hills upon Maximilian’s arrival, is pitted against Maximilian’s aristocratic monarchy; but the real villain, of course, is Louis Napoléon, who connives to elude the application of the Monroe Doctrine to his appetite for Mexico. “You bourgeois Bonaparte!” Maximilian’s wife, Carlotta, shouts at the little tyrant at his court when he renegs on his treaty and begins withdrawing his army from Mexico, without whose support Maximilian will perish. Audiences in 1939 understood Carlotta’s insult as a knock at Hitler.
Director William Dieterle, working intelligently and industriously but with scant inspiration, must helm a divided film. The action shifts back and forth between Juárez, his generals and the impoverished Mexicans supporting him, on the one hand, and the hifalutin, elegant Maximilian and Carlotta, on the other. Excellent performances come from John Garfield as Juárez’s General Porfirio Díaz and Brian Aherne as Emperor Maximilian. Claude Rains is a loathsome hoot as Louis. Bette Davis rarely played devout women, but early on she is deeply moving as Carlotta, who cannot bear her husband a child. For me, however, Davis is close to ridiculous when Carlotta dissolves into insanity, her eyes popping and rolling. All in all, the Juárez material lends the film its greatest interest.
John Huston contributed to the Leftist script. Aeneas MacKenzie and Wolfgang Reinhardt also contributed.
A reminder: Benito Mussolini was named after Juárez by his socialist father. That kid just didn’t get it right.
Like this:
Tags: Bette Davis, Muni
This entry was posted on April 6, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.