Ricardo Montalban is likely best remembered for starring on TV’s Fantasy Island, so it is odd to see him a couple of decades younger than he was on that show, and in a serious role. He is the lead in 1949’s Border Incident, a noir about an illegal immigrant smuggling operation. Alas, when we first see him, he is on a passenger plane, and all I could think about was how he was on “Da plane! Da plaaaaane!!!”
Needless to say, the Mexican-American border seems to be an even more contentious subject now than it was when this picture was made. I suspect migrants have always been exploited, but what is happening to the illegal field workers in this film is downright diabolical. First, the migrants pay to be smuggled across the border, then they work for Howard Da Silva for a while before being sent back across the border. There, they are killed by some of the rancher’s men who then take the workers’ meagre belongings.
That has to be a small return on investment for such a complicated operation. When we first see this happen, there are several men on each side of the border, coordinating their actions through signal lights. The bodies are disposed of in quicksand pits. I wondered whether anybody still in Mexico ever noticed nobody seems to return after being smuggled across. Maybe life is so hard for most of them that they just push such thoughts out of their heads.
The desperation is palpable in a scene where Montalban waits in a sea of workers hoping to get one of the rare work permits. Something I found odd is the first name called out for a permit is “Jesus Hernandez” and only one guy steps forward. I suspect there would have been at least a half-dozen same-named men in a crowd of that size.
Montalban is a Mexican federal agent working undercover to investigate such smuggling operations. Striking up a conversation with a downtrodden worker (James Mitchell), he learns whom to pay 70 pesos for such an illicit crossing. Mitchell tags along, though the agent tries to discourage him.
The front-end of the Mexican side of the operation is run by Sig Ruman, in a particularly vicious role. That shocked me, because I largely know him from his comic roles, where he played rather buffoonish characters in such films as To Be or Not to Be, Ninotchka and a couple of Marx Brothers features.
At the same time Montalban in infiltrating De Silva’s operation, a FBI agent played by George Murphy is doing the same from a different angle. He’s given a fake criminal background and made to appear as if he is on the run. He claims to have some blank, legitimate work passes and he offers these for sale to De Silva. I liked the parallel plot threads and they are managed well.
There’s an especially tense night scene where Montalban sneaks up to a room where Murphy is being held captive until those passes arrive. Director Anthony Mann wisely chose to not use any music for this moment, so we hear ever creak of the tree the Mexican agent scales, and the sound of shoes on wood boards as Murphy’s guard climbs the stairs to investigate noises he’s heard.
Deserts are well suited for noir, and the photography makes great use of natural environments. The photography and shot compositions are largely excellent without being excessively showy. A jeep tears across the desert, leaving a dust cloud in its wake. Patterns of light coming through a covering of straw fall upon the faces of workers tightly packed into the back of a truck. The film opens on aerial footage of the canal, farms and irrigation ditches of California’s Imperial Valley, the clouds in the sky reflected in the waters.
There’s a lot to recommend Border Incident, a more than above-average slice of desert noir. I especially doubt I will ever forget a scene involving a downed man and a tractor. It is a small mercy we don’t see the outcome of that, and it made me grateful this film wasn’t made today, when we doubtlessly would see the results.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Starring Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray