***In The Time Of The 1930s Cuban Revolution-Jennifer Jones and John Garfield’s We Were Strangers   

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

We Were Strangers, Jennifer Jones, John Garfield, Columbia Pictures, 1949

The history of Cuba had been replete with struggles against tyranny well before the boys of the Sierra Madres, you know the Castro Brothers, beloved Che the Argentine internationalist heart of the revolution, the lost Frank Paisa man of the cities, and all their brethren who took down Batista in the late 1950s. Took him down almost without a fight at the end when the masses waited in the cities and farms for the boys (and girls, don’t forget Haydee Santamaria) to work their way to Havana town. Of course everybody remembers, or should, the legendary 19^th century revolutionary Jose Marti, celebrated in story and song, still honored in Cuba today and his struggle to get rid of the bloody Spanish oppressors and the later struggle in the 1930s against the hyenas, the Machado, the hyenas who were replaced later by the that self-same Batista. So the island of Cuba has been no stranger to the struggle for freedom (and the Bay of Pigs-style operations to thwart such struggles) the film under review, We Were Strangers, demonstrates in its depiction of the fight against the hyenas in the 1930s mentioned above. Of course this film which was released in 1949 could not have dealt with the regime that followed, Batista’s, since this film is centered on the 1930s struggles. That later regime necessitated the Castro boys taking up arms in the hills after the initial defeat at Moncado.        

Here is the skinny. The hyenas took over in the 1920s and ran rampart over the country and for the foreign, mainly the United States, interests in the sugar production. (Cuba was a classic monoculture colonial and semi-colonial country around the sugar crop, and to a lesser extent still is). The younger generation of professionals and a smattering of workers and peasants decided that they had had enough and as was the norm in that day, and not just in Cuba, created underground revolutionary organizations in order to overthrow the strongman. A familiar enough story particularly in the 20th century.

And so the young upstarts and old freedom-lovers created an organization and devised some ideas about how they could overthrow the regime. But then they ran up against the problem every revolutionary organization faces in times of serious oppression, the passivity or resignation of the masses. The question for such organizations then becomes what to do-wait until the masses are so oppressed they will rise on their own or to nudge the masses into activity by an exemplary action aimed at the heart of the regime. Well our boys, most of them, opted for not waiting, for action now.

Of course that decision entailed making a plan to create the biggest splash possible and to a great extent the core of this film centers on the creation of that splash promoted by an angry young revolutionary who had been in exile for a while (his father had fled Cuba after some problems which caused Fenner (played by John Garfield) endless shame and a need to bring back to his family name. The gist of the plan, seemingly foolproof, was to kill some well-known top governmental official and then set a massive explosion at his funeral which was sure to be attended by the president and the major players in government. Wipe them out at one blow and set the masses in motion for their freedom. Maybe in a cakewalk. By hook or by crook the group that Fenner recruits to do the preparation and digging of a tunnel underneath the graveside complete their work under tremendous pressure. The target (a Senate President) is duly killed and… Well, and the guy in NOT to be buried where he was supposed to be. Scratch Plan A, plan B is to get Fenner out of the country but he is subject to a wide scale manhunt and is finally cornered and killed after a heroic individual struggle not to be taken alive. Shortly thereafter the freedom forces do overthrow the hyenas and set up the next level of struggle in Cuban history.              

Oh yeah, this is a Hollywood production after all, a 1940s production and there naturally has to be some romantic interest to keep the action from being too tedious. So enter China (played by Jennifer Jones), the sister of a fallen revolutionary who is intimately involved in the plan, and gets intimately involved with Fenner (1940s intimately film involved). That involvements shifts both their motivations slightly as they now want to struggle so that they can raise a family in freedom, not an unworthy motive, no question. But also one where a certain softness set in which the security forces were able to exploit in order to corner Fenner. China was let to speak his eulogy, to write his epitaph in the then new Cuba.  Fenner died heroically but if any cautionary tale is to be taken from this film then it is once again that isolated revolutionary action in lieu of mass struggle is ultimately futile. That wisdom would surely be at the top of the list.