Juarez (1939)

Juarez is an American film first released in 1939, directed by William Dieterle.  The film stars Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains and John Garfield.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


1864.  When Mexico reneges on its debt payments, the Emperor Napoleon III of France sends an army to depose the Mexican president Benito Juarez and take control of the country.  Maximilian of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, is appointed Emperor of Mexico, not realising that the French have rigged the outcome of a plebiscite to favour imperial rule.  The Mexicans’ sympathies remain with Juarez and they are determined to see him reinstated as president...

With its lavish sets, ambitious action sequences and cast of over a thousand, Juarez was one of Warner Brothers’ most expensive productions – and it might have been a masterpiece if the vanity of its star actor hadn’t got in the way.  When he realised how small a part his character had in the film, Paul Muni – one of the most highly paid actors in Hollywood at the time – insisted that several additional scenes (taking up an extra fifty pages of dialogue) be added to "beef up" his character.  If the film appears slow, uneven and at times boring, this is the reason why.  

Originally, the film – based on Bertita Harding’s novel "The Phantom Crown" – was to have centred on Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlotta.  It was meant to tell the tragic tale of a man who, discovering he has been duped into being a puppet emperor of the French, attempts to rule Mexico with a fair hand, until events turn against him.  With Muni’s heavy handed insertions, the film loses its focus and at times feels like a laboured polemic on the virtues of democracy over imperialist dictatorships.

The film has its strengths, scoring very highly in the art design and cinematography departments.  There are also some great performances, the best by some margin being Brian Aherne’s sympathetic portrayal of the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian (for which the actor earned an Oscar nomination).   Bette Davis veers close to over theatricality in her early scenes but redeems herself later on when her character slides into paranoid insanity and all but steals the show.   Claude Rains is a surprising but effective choice for the part of Napoleon III, the actor’s best portrayal of villainy since his appearance – or rather non-appearance - in The Invsible Man (1933).   The only cuckoo in the nest is the heavily made-up Paul Muni – his phlegmatic characterisation and drawn out delivery just about drains the life out of the film and, come to that, anyone watching it.

Juarez may not be perfect but on the scales of artistic merit its virtues outweight its sins.   One of the interesting things about this film is its frequent allusions to the events that were taking place in Europe at the time.  There are several references to the impending conflict between democracy and fascism, and Napoleon III is often likened to Hitler – notably in the chillingly expressionistic scene where Bette Davis sees him transformed into the Devil.

© James Travers 2008

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