We Were Strangers (1949) on Netflix
NR19491h 46mAdventureDramaRomanceThriller
China Valdés, a bank clerk in Havana, vows to kill Armando Ariete after her brother Manolo is gunned down over anti-government flyers. Tony Fenner asks her to join his underground instead.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.6/101,584 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Plot summary
In 1933 Havana, China Valdés works in a bank while her brother Manolo hands out flyers against the government. A plainclothes officer shoots him at the University of Havana, and China vows to kill the man, Armando Ariete. At the funeral, the American Tony Fenner invites her to join his underground group instead of acting alone. When Fenner learns her house stands beside a cemetery, he proposes a tunnel from it to the family plot of a senior official, Contreras, so the group can assassinate him and detonate a bomb at the funeral that follows. Among those who dig are Guillermo Montilla, a dockworker, Miguel, who repairs bicycles, and Ramón Sánchez, a graduate student.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about We Were Strangers (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A biography of Lee Harvey Oswald records that he was 'greatly excited' while watching We Were Strangers on television in October 1963, only a few weeks before he assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
- The film's crypt-tunnel plot came from real events: in 1932 the ABC opposition group assassinated the President of the Cuban Senate, Clemente Vázquez Bello, after tunnelling into the Vázquez family crypt in Havana's Colón Cemetery to blow up dictator Gerardo Machado at the funeral; the family buried him elsewhere and the plan failed.
- While making the film, John Huston was asked to give Marilyn Monroe, then unknown, a screen test, and as a result cast her in a small role in his next film, The Asphalt Jungle.
- The Hollywood Reporter denounced the film's politics as "a shameful handbook of Marxian dialectics", and the film was withdrawn from theaters shortly after its release.
