Santiago

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.

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.

It's not easy to explain what went wrong with SANTIAGO. It has a basic good story, a top-level cast, and an experienced director; yet it lies virtually flat as a pancake as it unravels on screen. It suffers a serious failure to involve the audience in either the adventure or the romance.

This picture was made by Alan Ladd's production company. To Ladd's credit it's next to impossible to see this picture. Never issued in VHS or DVD, never re-issued, difficult to ever find a listing on eBay.

Leave this one alone and seek out Iron Mistress, Boy on a Dolphin, or two dozen other very good films starring Alan Ladd.

This is an above-average outing for Alan Ladd, who had a very uneven career, but the real value is in the superb cast of supporting character actors, including Lloyd Nolan, Paul Fix, Chill Wills and Royal Dano, among others.

"Santiago" is set in Cuba just before the Spanish-American War. Ladd and Nolan are competing gunrunners trying to sell weapons to the Cuban revolutionaries. Neither are saints, but whereas Nolan is the obviously villainous type, Ladd is the Good Man with a Stain in his background, just waiting to be rescued from the wrong path. His guide is the beautiful rebel Rossana Podesta, who is fiery, noble and breathes deeply on cue. Wills, Fix and the rest of the very competent supporting cast play their roles well. There is one surprise in the ending but otherwise it's predictable.

It's a competent studio production for the period, with enough detail to make it credible. It's not a great movie, but it is good entertainment, with a beautiful girl, a Cause and a Moral...what more could you ask for in 1956!