Border Incident (1949)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Border Incident (1949) – A. Mann

Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton teamed up for a number of classic films noir (T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked By Night), including this one.  Ricardo Montalban stars as a Mexican federal police official who goes undercover to break up an illegal human trafficking ring (smuggling farmworkers, braceros, across the border to work them illegally below the minimum wage without visas and then killing them when they return to Mexico with their earnings). Montalban teams up with George Murphy, an American immigration official, who also goes undercover, as a wanted man who has stolen 400 blank visa documents.  Together they try to take down Howard Da Silva and Charles McGraw but it’s a dangerous job – indeed, this 1948 noir contains some shocking violence for its time.  Mann frames the story with a faux documentary style (popular for many noirs) and Alton offers some perfectly framed shots mixing darkness and light.  Seventy years later the issues in focus here are still topical but the film rightly focuses on the plight of the poor braceros caught in the middle.