Mystery in Mexico (1948)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Best movie ever!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Beautifully photographed on many actual Mexican locations by Jack Draper, this is a fascinating, fast-moving little noir mystery thriller from director Robert Wise. The stars, William Lundigan and Jacqueline White, are excellent. In a difficult role, Lundigan never gave a more personable, skillful performance, while Jacqueline White is so charming and so delightfully animated, it's hard to believe that she was nearing the end of her movie career. The villain here is played by Ricardo Cortez with nothing like the same subtlety as Lundigan and White lend to their characters. Outstanding support players it was also good to see include sexy Jacqueline Dalya in a suitably flashy role as Dolores, and burly Eduardo Casado, who contributes a nice bit of business to his part as the police commandant. In her only movie appearance, Thalia Draper, the daughter of ace Mexican-based photographer, Jack Draper, can be glimpsed as Floracita.

There's intrigue in the area surrounding Mexico City when an American singer (Jacqueline White) arrives to try to find her missing brother. She's unaware that the friendly masher (William Lundigan) sitting next to her is an American detective, and after her ice melts, sparks fly. But she gets more than she bargained for and ends up singing in the very same club where her own brother was working undercover.A complex plot is helped by the direction of a former film editor (Robert Wise) who would rise to greater things after an inauspicious beginning. The normally overly enthusiastic characterization of the Mexicans usually seen in American films is replaced by a more realistic approach, and the film is fraught with tension. The problem is occasional slow pacing that takes an already short film down to a frequent snail's pace but is effective in its darker sequences. Jacqueline Dalva adds some spice to a typical Mexican Spitefire character who brings her fiery persona a bit more down to earth. Ricardo Cortrez is wasted as a nightclub promoter.

An early film from Robert Wise, the much acclaimed director of different science fiction and musical films, this is quite different stuff to what he would later be best known for, and in all honestly it is noticeably inferior too. It is far from being a poor film, but the production is far off being great too, with a quite lifeless, underdeveloped central romance and not too much to get excited over in terms of the mystery plot and technical credits. To fans of its director, the film will certainly be of some interest, but to other viewers it might well sit as mediocre: neither really good nor really bad.

There's not much of one -- a mystery, that is -- but that's S.O.P for these programmers that run a longish hour. But Robert Wise keeps things brisk and watchable, which isn't to be sneezed at. It's about an insurance investigator (William Lundigan) who follows a suspect (Jacqueline White) south of the border while trying to solve a jewelry theft. The whole shebang was filmed in the studios in Mexico City, with a largely native cast; among them is Ricardo Cortez, a big Latin heart-throb from the earliest talkies (when he was often paired with Bebe Daniels). This seems a bit of a comedown for Wise, who the previous year had helmed the excellent noir Born to Kill, starring Clare Trevor and Lawrence Tierney, and for that film we can almost forgive him for The Sound of Music, many years later.