Other times, other customs. This also applies to the depiction of violence in films: what seemed unimaginably cruel on the screen in 1954 is sometimes tame today. In the case of the Western Vera Cruz, however, this judgment seems doubtful. Even if no heads are flying around, The shock of the audience at the time is understandable. 15 years later, other films would take their cues from Vera Cruz and write the final chapters of the Western. The masterpiece is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
On Amazon Prime: A Western that critics condemned as a “sadistic show.”
Vera Cruz is set at the time of the French intervention in Mexico in the 1860s. A group of American mercenaries led by Trane (Gary Cooper) and Erin (Burt Lancaster) are supposed to bring a young countess to the port city of Vera Cruz. But on the way discover what your client is actually planning. And reconsider their loyalties.
Check out the trailer for Vera Cruz here:
Vera Cruz – Trailer (German) HD
Robert Aldrich’s film (The Dirty Dozen) may not be particularly bloody by today’s standards, but it still manages to be disturbing with its atmosphere of cynicism and brutality. This atmosphere came as a shock to critics at the time: The New York Times, for example condemned the film as “sadistic show” full of “senseless violence“. Some moments will shock even today’s viewers. When Lancaster’s character threatens to kill underage hostages, his lack of conscience still has an immense impact 69 years later.
Over the next 15 years, directors like Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Sam Peckinpah would take up Vera Cruz’s ideas and take them to their logical conclusion: Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch – They knew no law, a distant relative of Aldrich’s film in terms of content, is a such a masterful and bloody swan song to the myth and morality of the Wild West, that the entire genre no longer had anything to say for many fans after that.
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