We Were Strangers Reviews

A confused movie that alternately wants to be about politics in Cuba, insurgents threatening to topple an oppressive regime, and a love story, We Were Strangers is a muddy viewing experience. There’s plenty of talent lined up, but writer/director John Huston was clearly distracted while making this one. His inability to focus shows throughout, most egregiously in the faux-happy ending to a story that feels spiraling towards tragedy at the best of times, and at the worst just feels dishonest and lazy as though he treated thorny subject matter as inoffensively as possible.

So that leaves the politics only half-formed here, but what about the love story that consistently threatens to takeover? It’s a non-starter. Stars John Garfield and Jennifer Jones have an anti-chemistry that makes any of their love scenes fizzle on contact. Garfield is fine if unremarkable here, and I wonder what Huston could have done with Garfield in a juicier role.

Jones is…fine, I guess? She’s sacked with a Cuban accent that comes and goes, sometimes within the same scene, and she generally appears mildly embarrassed about appearing in this thing. The only actors turning in uniformly solid work are Gilbert Roland and Roman Novarro in supporting roles, and they’re sacrificed towards the end in favor of more close-ups of Jones’ face as her mouth does that overly active, quivering thing that seems independent from the rest of her body.

It doesn’t help that We Were Strangers was released in-between towering artistic achievements like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Asphalt Jungle. It only makes the anemic quality of this film, despite some impressionistic and moody lighting that’s quite nice in some scenes, all the more prominent. Oh, and Ernest Hemingway was right when he told Huston how he thought he should end it. Shame he didn’t listen to him.