Vera Cruz
With Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel.
US, 1954, 35mm, color, 94 min.
Print source: HFA
Playfully alluding to the differences in the actors’ outspoken politics and studio-branded personae, Robert Aldrich places Burt Lancaster’s charming, coarse and unscrupulous rancher into an uneasy partnership with Gary Cooper’s civil and upstanding Southern military gentleman. Through multiplying twists and double-crosses, the two mercenaries charge full speed ahead on a special mission to Mexico to protect a charming countess. Aldrich’s second collaboration with Lancaster as actor and producer was endangered by its extravagant and unpredictable production, which was riddled with sickness, improvised scenes and live ammunition. Encapsulated in Lancaster’s disarming smile, Aldrich’s fusion of the beautiful, volatile spectacle of the old Western with the complex morality and menacing absurdity of the genre’s modernist revisions blazed a deconstructive trail for the violent, cynical visions of Peckinpah and Leone.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
