We Were Strangers
The story draws on events that occurred as part of the political violence that led to the overthrow of Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado y Morales in 1933. In 1932, a violent opposition group, the ABC (abecedarios), assassinated the President of the Cuban Senate Clemente Vazquez Bello. They had constructed a tunnel to reach the Vazquez family crypt in Havana's Colón Cemetery and planted an explosive device there, anticipating that Machado would attend the funeral. The plan failed when the family decided to bury Vazquez elsewhere.
The film is about a group of revolutionaries who plot to bring down their corrupt government. The title, chosen by the distributor Columbia Pictures in place of Rough Sketch, identifies how they come together with no prior associations, sharing only their political principles. China Valdez (Jennifer Jones) is a bank clerk who has a brother who distributes anti-government flyers. She watches as a government operative guns him down on the steps of the University of Havana. She vows to kill his assassin, Ariete. At her brother's funeral, Tony Fenner (John Garfield), an American confederate of her brother, tells her to join his anti-government underground group instead of taking revenge on her own. When he learns that China's house borders a cemetery, he devised a scheme to dig a tunnel from China's house to the cemetery, assassinate a senior government official whose family plot is in that cemetery, and then detonate a bomb during the man's funeral, killing the government officials among the mourners. His disparate group of tunnelers includes a dockworkers, a bicycle mechanic, and a graduate student. Much of the movie is devoted to the digging of the tunnel. The tunnelers struggle with the need to kill men who are less than entirely evil and to take the lives of innocent bystanders. Ramon goes mad thinking of these issues, wanders off and dies in a traffic accident. Ariete harasses China, jealous of her relationship with Fenner, who he has learned is actually Cuban by birth.
When the tunnel is ready, a prominent government minister is assassinated as planned. As a munitions expert prepares to set the bomb in place, they learn that the burial will take place elsewhere, not in the family tomb as expected. They make plans for Fenner, who by now is well known to Ariete, to leave Cuba. China will get the necessary funds from Fenner's account at her bank. Fenner rages about his failure, the disgrace of returning to the people who funded his trip with small donations, fleeing as he had as a boy with his father. Only in supporting him at this point does China declare her love for him. China obtains the funds but sends a fellow employee because she is being tailed by one of Ariete's men. But Fenner, unwilling to leave without her, comes to China's house. The film climaxes with a violent shoot-out sequence, followed by the outbreak of revolution and popular celebration.
avant garde, murder