Stealing across the Borderline

There’s something sad about watching old movies about Mexico at the same time the local news is just full of stories depicting that country as being more and more overrun by drug dealers.

Perhaps it is because so many of the movies made in the 1940s and 1950s had such a sunny, optimistic view of Mexican life. Granted, it seemed a lot easier to appreciate Mexican life in the 1940s and 1950s if you were a visiting American tourist than if you were an actual Mexican citizen. Mexico was all too often depicted back then as a worry-free paradise full of colorful dancers, beggars, cab drivers and bartenders whose sole function seemed to be waiting on visiting American tourists. The idea that Mexicans could have lives that did not center around visiting foreigners was all too often a quaint notion that Hollywood had little time for.

And to be fair, the image more modern Hollywood movies often paint is not much of an improvement. In some ways, I would almost prefer a downbeat movie like Traffic or El Norte which at least tries to deal seriously with the issues which still affect modern Mexico than yet another movie like 10 or the recent Heartbreak Kid remake which depict Mexicans as little more than background characters in their own country.

In any event, I recently watched two movies about Mexico: 1950’s Borderline and 1949’s The Big Steal.

Borderline was not quite forgettable but not really worth devoting a lot of time to. The film basically involves Claire Trevor going undercover to expose a big drug ring run by Raymond Burr, only to stumble across the path of a mysterious character (played by Fred MacMurray) who may or may not be on the same side. Along the way she sings a really awful Spanish song which serves as her way of establishing her credentials as a song-and-dance girl and gets wooed by one of Burr‘s assistants. MacMurray butts in, Burr gets wise, Trevor and MacMurray are forced to flee for their lives and the chase is on.

Along the way Trevor and MacMurray get a few good lines but nothing particularly memorable. None of the Mexican characters are depicted as being as evil as the American characters -- indeed, the film‘s absence of a conventional Latin villain is perhaps the best part of this flick. Then again none of the American characters are depicted as being as backward as a local Mexican lawman who shows up halfway through the picture. The guy is depicted as a well-meaning sort who nevertheless had the potential to prove a formidable adversary had his wife not been using as a clothesline the phone line with which he communicated with other Mexican lawmen. How truthful this depiction was, I do not know, but I doubt it was much appreciated by the local Mexican Chamber of Commerce.


1949’s The Big Steal is a big improvement on Borderline. As much as I liked MacMurray and Trevor, there is no denying that the pairing of Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in this movie was truly inspired -- or at least as inspired as one can expect after seeing the same team-up in 1947’s Out of the Past. Indeed, The Big Steal seems very much a reverse version of Out of the Past.

Both viewed Mexico as a sanctuary for tourists fleeing the hecticness of American life and both films hint at disaster if certain characters were to make a premature return to the States. As most movie buffs know, Out of the Past ends on a more downbeat note than The Big Steal and is famous for being one of the more well-known examples of the film noir genre. The Big Steal is too upbeat to make for a good film noir and too full of car chases and gunshots to make for a good romantic comedy. And yet I found it just as memorable in its way as Out of the Past and even the presence of William Bendix as a very unlikely military officer did not change my mind about it.

Especially memorable in The Big Steal was Ramon Navarro’s performance as a local police Inspector General who used his poor English to disguise a cleverness that Columbo would envy. Navarro’s character might not always seem like he knew anything that was going on but he was a whole lot more smarter than any of the American characters ever realized and his commentary on the events that unfolded in this movie was often a joy to hear. If nothing else, I certainly found it refreshing to see a Mexican police officer in an American movie who never once fussed with telephone lines nor complained about not needing any stinking badges.

If only more Mexican policemen in Hollywood movies were like him. For that matter, I would not mind seeing more people like him in the real-life Mexico. But, alas, I fear that such an individual would not have a very long lifespan.

¡Qué lástima!