The Americano

AMAZON but not really,the river scene...no...piranha.no man a geography mess..The sad thing is they come to our contry to film this thing ,they shot in cool location but for them to sell they have to put the label AMAZON..JUNGLE ...sad man.they shoot in MATO GROSSO nice place i like that but AMAZON ..stereotypes only and the language PORTUNHOL a mix between portuguese and spanish man stereotype ONLY but i already went to wacth knowing that would happen because...AMERICANS..and..GEOGRAPHY dont go together but its not good and itsnot bad i DIG it had fun nothing compromising long that gets boring..NOT BAD!!!

I won't write 4 paragraphs about the plot. I wanted to see this movie again from another perspective. In the 50s to 1966 when Eric Fleming was killed in Peru filming an adventure movie, studios did some live filming on field locations because the tourist industry, airlines, people with vacation money wanted to see Panama, Brazil, Morocco etc. I like to watch on location movies with Ford and other actors. This one is good for the location filming but shallow. Glenn Ford displays again his excellent horsemanship. he was considered of the top 3 riders of that time. 2 high jumps and 3 running mounts. I can watch a whole movie of him riding. This is 1 movie where its not about him in a romance, so his acting has more character. For as much as this story could have contained, it was spread out evenly. Glenn was great, movie is good.

The main problem with The Americano I feel is it's a film that should never have been undertaken by a studio that was on its way out. Yet RKO was in fact lucky enough to get this thing done and released at all. At least one member of the original cast, Sarita Montiel, never finished it and her scenes had to be reshot with Abbe Lane.

The Americano is a story about a Texas cattle breeder who has bred three prize Brahma bulls and is selling them to a rancher in Brazil. Glenn Ford as the rancher hopes that the money will help him and his brother get started on a new place of their own. He's accompanying the bulls to Brazil and is expecting to get $2500.00 for them.

Of course when he gets there his potential buyer is dead and Ford is soon involved in a local range war, something you've seen in a gazillion American westerns. The dead man's partner, Frank Lovejoy is himself the he bull of the valley trying to push out the other smaller ranchers and farmers like Ursula Thiess.

It was an ambitious undertaking that RKO did, a studio that was on its last legs since Howard Hughes sold it and didn't want it for a plaything any more. The location shooting in Brazil is the best thing about The Americano. A studio like MGM or Paramount should have done this film, with a better story. As it was the film shut down and then was completed stateside in California because it ran out of money. Ford walks through the film looking like a man who was worried his salary check wouldn't clear.

Cesar Romero has an interesting if undefined role as a local bandit who winds up helping the local police. As for Lovejoy there is an interesting gay subtext to his role. He tries to get Ford to stay in Brazil and partner with him, but Ford says he has to get back to Texas and his family. Then Lovejoy pays him and then sets up a robbery where one of his own men is killed so Ford has to return. Now just why was he craving Ford's company so much?

Ford's got eyes for Ursula Thiess though and when he's forced to choose a side, his duty is clear. That upsets Lovejoy even more.

The panorama of the Amazon forest deserved a film of the epic sweep of Gone With The Wind or even Duel In The Sun. What it got was a warmed over range war plot that could have come from a Roy Rogers film.

Four years before he would be known as the master of the gimmick, William Castle directed this South of the border Western starring Glenn Ford, Cesar Romero, Abby Lane and Frank Lovejoy. In true William Castle style, tho let it be known it wasn't always his fault, The Americano was met with a number of problems. Not least that after being afforded a considerable budget by RKO standards, they ran out of money half way thru. With most of the shoot being in the Matto Grosso jungle in Brazil, where it's believed that Budd Boetticher took control of the shoot, they had to hop tail it back to Hollywood where the project sat in limbo for months. By the time of the reconvene, original choice for the role of Teresa, Sara Montiel, had moved onto Warner Bros and was no longer available after having her RKO contract cancelled for the film. In came Abby Lane and all the scenes with Teresa in had to be re-shot.

The plot sees Ford as Texas cowboy Sam Dent who agrees to take on a job of delivering prize Bulls to a mysterious buyer down near the Amazon in Brazil. However, when he gets there he finds that the man he was meant to meet has been murdered. Quickly making friends with Manuel (Romero), Dent finds that there is a range war going on and that bandits run rife in the area. Trying to stay neutral he finds that he may have to pick a side after all. Does he trust Manuel, a well known bandit by all accounts, be loyal to Bento Hermanny (Lovejoy) who has given him a roof over his head, or pitch in with the lovely Marianna Figuerido (Ursula Thiess) who he is starting to get sweet on? Either way it possibly spells trouble for him.

Amiable, if over used, story that becomes watchable due to the efforts of Ford (as cool as ever) and Romero (who walks away with the movie), The Americano is clearly not the movie the makers set out to make. It was a bold move to make a Western down by the Amazon, not least because the locale should have made for rich pickings. But the problems off screen are up there on the screen. It's photographed by William E. Snyder (Creature from the Black Lagoon/Flying Leathernecks) and the locale is not utilised at all. Shot in Technicolor, the jungle sadly looks grey and almost ashen. There's a little bit of good lens work for a fire sequence, but the majority of it is very poor. They may as well have just built a cheap jungle set at the California base where the rest of the film was shot. The editing is bad and some scenes are blighted by basic errors, watch as Ford is hand tied on his horse one minute then rides an escape in free hand the next! Then there is the awful performance of Thiess, so bad it's obvious why she didn't go on to have a career in Hollywood. This in spite of Howard Hughes manfully fighting her corner.

However, this is a film I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to my Western loving friends on proviso they don't expect too much. Ford and Romero are worth it, as is a couple of scenes such as a pitch fork fight and a dandy piranha dangle sequence. While for the boys Lane warbles and wobbles in a very engaging way. So a big case of not what it should have been, but not without its merits either, and certainly fun enough to adequately fill a couple of hours of undemanding time. 5.5/10

The Americano (1955)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

William Castle's Western is pretty familiar on many grounds but it's also a lot different on others, which makes it worth checking out. American Sam Dent (Glenn Ford) heads to Brazil to sell his cattle so that he and his brother can live better but once there he gets in the middle of a land owner (Frank Lovejoy) and a "bandit" (Cesar Romero) who are battling each other. THE AMERICANO, story wise, really doesn't offer us anything we haven't seen countless times before so if you're looking for something original then you're certainly not going to find it here. Based on story alone this film would be worth skipping but what makes it so entertaining and worth watching are the locations. The Brazilian jungle really makes for an interesting setting and I must admit that it was a lot of fun seeing some routine Western scenes "updated" for the location. How many times have we seen a scene where the cowboy must take the cattle across some water? Well, in the scene here the problem is that there are crocodiles and piranhas in the water. How many times have we seen the cowboy beat or threaten a bad guy into telling the truth about something? Well, in this film those same piranhas are used to get him to talk. I really enjoyed seeing these familiar scenes updated to the setting and throw in the Technicolor and this really makes the film worth seeing. It also features some good performances with Ford leading the way playing a good guy like only he can. Lovejoy was extremely entertaining and steals every scene he's in and Romero is also very good in his role. Castle's direction isn't anything ground-breaking but he does a good job piecing everything together and keeping the film flowing at a nice pace.