ISTORIE ȘI FILM. EPISODUL ,, VERA CRUZ’’

Abstract

Topics such war or other violent conflicts have long been in the attention of filmmakers, as they found a rich source of inspiration in the historical past. The public’s perception of the historical events rendered by cinematography was strongly influenced by the artistic work that illustrated them, but also by the contemporary socio-political context. The Western, considered the quintessential  American film genre, has, in its classical period, a strong symbolic charge, being part of North American mythology. As the Cold War intensified, some American filmakers moved the background of the action of these films from the western border to the southern border of the United States, with frequent incursions into Mexico, a territory with a well-defined place in the American imagination. One such movie is Vera Cruz (1954) which transcends the conventional barriers of a classic western, which, starting, from an important event in Mexican history, becomes the bearer of a political message.