Juarez

William Dietrle's 1939 epic Juarez is a wonderful, well-preserved period drama. At first glance, it's a typical, musty old Hollywood biopic, but beneath the surface lies an intriguing story with really smart (and still very pertinent) things to say about imperialism, democracy, revolution and geopolitics. Surprisingly, the film's emotional anchor is not in Paul Muni's rather stiff portrayal of the title character, Mexican patriot Benito Juarez, but its portrayal of the hapless Emperor Maximilian (Brian Aherne), an improbably naive and progressive nobleman used as a pawn in France's imperial ambitions.

In 1864, French Emperor Napoleon III (Claude Rains)'s plans of establishing an empire in Mexico are going awry, facing fierce resistance from Benito Juarez's (Paul Muni) guerillas. At the suggestion of his cunning wife (Gale Sondergaard), Napoleon appoints Austrian nobleman Maximilian Emperor of Mexico, using a fake plebiscite to put a respectable face on his venture. Maximilian and his beautiful wife Carlota (Bette Davis) receive great acclaim, and Juarez's cause seems lost due to military defeat, dissent within his own ranks, and Maximilian's plans for liberal reform. However, Juarez switches to guerilla tactics, confounding Maximilian's forces, and more importantly, the United States threatens to intervene in Mexico, causing Napoleon to withdraw his troops - leaving Maximilian and his loyalists in the lurch.

For a movie made in 1939, Juarez has a lot of interesting and useful things to say about imperial geopolitics. The movie makes some overt parallels with the then-growing European crisis - the power-mad, mustachioed Napoleon is channelling Adolf Hitler - and some of the movie's lectures on the virtue of democracy are a bit tedious, but overall, Dieterle and screenwriters John Huston (!), Aenas MacKenzie, and Wolfgang Reinahrdt create a very intelligent film that examines both sides of the imperialist coin. Although it venerates both Juarez and Maximilian, it somehow avoids a conflict of interest by acknowledging a simple fact: both men have good intentions, but Juarez, sticking up for his own country, is clearly in the right. As Gandhi said, any people would prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.

While Juarez himself is a reverential figurehead, idolizing Abraham Lincoln and reciting noble platitudes about the justice of democracy, Maximilian is a wonderfully-drawn character. Maximilian and his wife are improbably earnest; they are genuine progressives who think they are doing right, and certainly their intentions of liberalizing the country are noble. (Compare this portrayal to George Macready's scheming, backstabbing Maximilian in Vera Cruz.) Nonetheless, they are ornamented stalking horses for imperialism, however noble their intentions; that they, too, were deceived into taking the throne (by a rigged election) matters little. The charade is doomed from the start; only a small cotiere of military leaders and conservatives support the regime, and most of these abandon Maximilian when the going gets tough.

It's hard to think of a contemporary scenario particular to the film's events (maybe South Vietnam), but its portrayal of a conquered country seething with unrest, a sanguine guerilla war with premature declarations of victory, the well-meaning but ineffectual leader propped up by foreign bayonets, and an occupying power withdrawing through political pressure, will certainly resonnate with modern viewers.

Dieterle provides strong direction; he handles the movies action scenes adequately, but does a great job with his cast and the larger scenes of the film - an intimate drama with enough scope to keep it going. The script is perfectly paced and generally well-written - only a few of Juarez's civics lessons come off a bit flat. The movie has gorgeous art direction, and wonderfully expressive cinematography courtesy of Tony Gaudio - particularly in the later sections, where Carlotta begins to go mad under pressure. Erich Wolfgang Korngold provides a dramatic, expressive score to the proceedings.

Paul Muni's performance as the title character is fairly stiff; he's mostly a figurehead for Mexican democracy and self-determination, though he does have a great scene where he single-handedly faces down a treacherous lieutenant. Brian Aherne does a great job as the doomed idealist Maximilian, bringing great dignity and gravity to a much-reviled political figure. Bette Davis is equally impressive - beautiful, ambitious, fiercely devoted to her husband - as the tragic Carlotta. Claude Rains gives a ferocious villian performance, and the supporting cast couldn't be better, with fine turns from John Garfield, Gale Sondergaard, Louis Calhern, Joseph Calleia, Donald Crisp and Walter Kingsford.

Juarez is a fine film that hasn't dated a bit in its exploration of imperialism. It still holds remarkably well seventy years later, and is definitely worthy of more attention than it's gotten.