Product Details

• Actors: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield
• Directors: William Dieterle
• Writers: Bertita Harding, Franz Werfel, John Huston, Wolfgang Reinhardt, Ćneas MacKenzie
• Producers: Hal B. Wallis, Henry Blanke
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC
• Language: English, Spanish
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM/UA Home Video
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 125 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302010985
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,091 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A HOLLYWOOD STYLE MEXICAN REVOLUTION..., January 14, 2002

By	Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This 1939 film is an ambitious historical drama that, while based on history, takes creative license in dramatizing the story of Benito Juarez, the legendary Mexican freedom fighter who liberated the Mexican people from the French Empire and the puppet rule of the Habsburgs. Studded with an all star cast, it is an entertaining venture, though somewhat historically inaccurate.

Paul Muni in the role of the legendary Juarez eerily resembles the humble Mexican peasant of Indian stock who liberated the Mexican people from their foreign oppressors. Briane Aherne is almost saintly in the role of the doomed Maximilian Von Habsburg, who, having become head of the puppet government in a move engineered by the despotic Emporor of France, Louis Napoleon III (Claude Rains), believes that he and Juarez are not so far apart in their ideology, a belief with which Juarez begged to differ.

Bette Davis, surprisingly enough, looks positively beautiful as Maximilian's beloved wife, the tragic Carlotta, and does a wonderful job with this supporting role, understated until she becomes unbalanced towards the end, when the political perfidy of which she and her husband were victims becomes unbearable for her, causing her to go over the brink into madness.

Donald Crisp, Gilbert Roland, John Garfield, and Gale Sondergaard round out this excellent cast. The film is an intriguing blend of political propaganda, political correctness (for the time), and creative license. Still, it manages to capture the flavor of a Mexico desperate for independence from its European oppressors, the French and the Spanish Grandees and landowners, who looked down upon the predominantly Indian peons that constituted the majority of the Mexican people. All in all, it is a film well worth watching and one that will be enjoyed by all those who love classic, vintage films.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Typically bizarre Hollywood history, April 26, 2002

By	Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This movie really should have been called CARLOTTA AND MAXIMILIAN, because the doomy erstwhile emperor and empress get far more screentime than Juarez in this insane Hollywood concoction. Puppet emperors always make for interesting film stories (as in Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR), but the Manichaean demands of classic Hollywood made Warner Brothers realize that no matter how much screen time they'd give to Bette Davis and Brian Aherne as the Hapsburg couple they could never sell them as heroes. So, they recruited Paul Muni, the studio's favorite portrayer of noble biopic subjects, as the glum President Beinto Juarez, and two of Hollwyood's most recognizable essayers of villainous roles, Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard, to wear the black hats as Napoleon III and his empress Eugenie (Sondergaard is so archly evil she may as well be preparing to play the Spider Woman).

Muni doesn't make much of an impression plodding around impassively as Juarez, and with his stony facial expression the screenwriters and director clearly decided they'd better do **something** to remind the audience he was playing the good guy. So, Muni is always photographed in front of pictures of Abraham Lincoln (to remind viewers he's the republican). Aherne and Davis fare much better as the tragic Hapsburgs, and the film does have one great scene when Davis has to go to France to plead Naopeon and Eugenie for support and goes mad before their very eyes. Though you'd never guess it from the film's general free-and-easy approach to history, this scene actually happened in real life, and the dialogue in the scene pretty much follows the historical record--and there's a great visual touch when Davis, convinced the Bonapartes are trying to poison her, runs out of into the Tuileries gardens as if possessed into the night, her beautiful silver silk traveling dress billowing like a cloud around her as she shrinks into the blackness of the night (and her madness). But this, and the film's lovely use of "La Paloma" as a recurrent musical theme, are hardly enough to sustain you through the longeurs of Muni stalking around like a zombie.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great film! Bette Davis viva!!, September 1, 2002

By	Daniel G. Madigan (Redmond, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Juarez features Bette Davis as the Empress Carlotta, who, with her husband, Maximillian, assume monarchial status in Mexico and incur the wrath of Juarez, who has Maximilian killed. Bette tries to save her husband by going to the King of France and this portion of the film is not to be misssed. She storms Claude Rains as the King, and she withers him with her words, and then goes mad, and with such conviuction. The images of Davis careening down corridors of blackness screaming are not to be forgotten. Never mind the camp of Paul Muni as JUarez, it's all Bette Davis, and there are a thousand lessons in screen acting here.

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