Vera Cruz

(Robert Aldrich, US/Mexico 1954, 94 min., 35mm)

Ernest Borgnine. Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, and Ernest Borgnine star in this dirty, dusty, sweaty, cynical, and violent western, set in Mexico during the Franco-Mexican War, which preceded similar reinventions of America’s foremost genre by the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone for a decade. Vera Cruz made a profound impact on François Truffaut, then a film critic, who compared director Robert Aldrich’s efforts to those of Jean Cocteau and Orson Welles!