Santiago

I thought Alan Ladd would have produced this movie thru his Jaguar Production company, but no. Very strange. Anyway, I don't think it would have changed anything.... It is a western set in Cuba, no more no less the predictable and common Warner and Gordon Douglas association result. Nothing special to notice. Everything is efficient, a good time waster, as any Gordon Douglas's film. Alan Ladd is as wooden as usual too, but that belonged to his "charm". Rossana Podesta proceeds here her Hollywood adventure shortly after HELEN OF TROY, made by Robert Wise, the very same year. So, don't despise this adventure movie, even if it is not a masterpiece.

Even as a 9-year old in 1956, looking up at the screen in a suburban Sydney theatre on a Saturday afternoon, I knew "Santiago" was lacklustre.

Set during the 1898 Cuban revolution against Spain, enemies and gunrunners Cash Adams (Alan Ladd) and Clay Pike (Lloyd Nolan) join forces to ship guns to the rebels. However "Santiago" had the same predictable formula of many an Alan Ladd film at the time. Although they opened with an action sequence, they soon settled into an interminable gabfest while Ladd's character (usually embittered by something) sorted out the romantic situation with the girl in the movie - Rosanna Podestà in this case.

Rosanna had just launched a thousand ships as Helen in "Helen of Troy" (still a favourite). Apparently she couldn't speak English and learned her lines by rote for that movie. In "Santiago" she may have been dubbed; her voice has a rather detached quality.

The novel element in "Santiago" is that the guns are being taken to Cuba on a Mississippi paddle steamer captained by 'Sidewheel' Jones (Chill Wills). In those days, Alan Ladd and Chill Wills were actors I knew better than Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando.

It didn't take a particularly demanding critic to see that the interiors and much else in "Santiago" were filmed in a flat, artless manner, more or less matching the story.

The movie came to life a little at the end with a shootout between Cash and Clay Pike (who homages Burt Lancaster's death scene in the much better "Vera Cruz").

Incidentally, the Spanish soldiers in "Santiago" are cast in pretty much the same role as the stormtroopers in "Star Wars"; cannon fodder for Cash, Clay and Co. They get taken down so easily by flying knives and bullets that they hardly project any sense of menace at all.

At those Saturday afternoon matinees, I caught Alan Ladd at the tail end of his career. Now I can appreciate his work more objectively. Good as he was in "This Gun for Hire" and "Shane" he was just about perfect in "The Great Gatsby". It seems he was a nice guy and loyal. Decades later, his movies always remind me of those much-anticipated afternoons at the 'pictures' even if expectations weren't always met.

Alan Ladd plays Cash Adams, an ex-West Point officer who was dishonorably discharged from the military. Now he's a gun runner selling weapons to the highest bidder. He arrives in Tampa to sell guns to Cubans, who are fighting Spanish oppressors. Right away he's thrown a curve when he is told he must deliver the weapons to Cuba before he is paid. It is a switch of plans but he agrees but for double the original price. He delivers the cargo to large paddle boat operated by Captain Jones (Chill Wills). There, he is surprise to see Clay Pike (Lloyd Nolan), an old nemesis who is also selling weapons to Cuba.

Adams tells anyone who will listen that he is only interested in money. The viewer suspects that Adams doesn't quite believe that himself. On the boat, we meet Dona Isabella (Rossana Podesta), a Cuban patriot, who has been collecting funds in America. It becomes apparent that the rivalry Pike and Adams runs very deep and the two men seem to hate each other.

The boat arrives in Cuba, but there is another change of plan. The Spanish now control the roads. So the weapons will have to be transported through the heavy bush and jungle.There are a couple of close shaves but the group eventually manage to deliver the weapons to the specified destination. Adams learns that the Cubans were attacked by the Spanish and have gone into hiding. Pike has had too many changes to the plan and too many scrapes with death. He decides right then and there that they will forget the delivery and sell the weapons to the Spanish. Adams disagrees with his proposal.

Now the long running battle between the two men will come to a close. The fight to the death that both men had envisioned is about to take place. If Pike wins, the weapons will be sold to the Spanish. If Adams wins, they continue on in their journey to deliver the weapons. It's a solid little adventure film. The two leads, Nolan and Ladd, run the show and deliver as one would expect. Some reviewers really seem to dislike the film. It's no masterpiece, but a typical 50's adventure film, aimed at the youngsters.

Santiago was one of those routine action adventure programmers that Alan Ladd's agent Sue Carol insisted on casting him instead of letting him gradually transition to character roles. But when you're married to the agent and as agreeable a fellow as Ladd apparently was during his life you can't turn your agent down so easily.

This is one of the few American made films that deals with the Cuban rebellion as opposed to the Spanish-American War, not that there are that many that deal with it. The setting is Cuba in 1895 and the island which did not choose to participate in the general revolt against colonial Spain is finally getting tired of being a colony.

The plot concerns two American gun runners, Alan Ladd and Lloyd Nolan who hate each other both looking to sell guns to the Cuban rebels for cash on the barrel-head. To collect they have to go to Cuba with the delivery.

Along for the ride is Rosanna Podesta who is a Cuban patriot and both men are interested in her, Nolan quite cynical and open about it. It all doesn't make for a pleasant voyage to Cuba aboard Captain Chill Wills's old Mississippi steamboat used for transportation.

When they're on Lloyd Nolan and Chill Wills dominate the film. Nolan who never gave a bad performance on the big or small screen is a really thoroughly rotten human being. Ladd and he have quite a bit of history between them and Ladd has excellent reason to hate his guts.

No player on the planet was ever safe from Chill Wills's scene stealing antics especially as he got older and honed that particular aspect of his craft to perfection. Wills understudied Humphrey Bogart from The African Queen on how to pilot this drunken riverboat captain through the film. In a better film the Academy might have noticed this character.

Lots of action comes hard and fast in Santiago. The film is nicely paced and should appeal to fans of that genre and of the players involved.

The problem is that the heroes are supposedly fighting for the Cuban cause (against the Spanish invaders) but Cuba fell into American hands the same year;it would have been acceptable if Cash had remained an arms dealer ,just working for .....cash;but he tries to redeem himself,he's got a high moral conscience :he was a military man and he could never get over his shame,his demotion.His sense of honor is still intact and when he meets the beautiful Isabella,the rebels' Passionaria ,he is ripe for rehabilitation.

If you forget history-and the "cultural"lines at the beginning-you have a watchable adventures movie which begins as a western ,continues as some kind of pirate tale and ends with a long walk through the jungle.

As for Ladd,he did much worse than that :" guns of the Timberland" and mainly "Orazio e Curiazo " in which he plays like a zombie.