Louis Napoleon III takes advantage of the American Civil War to circumvent the Monroe Doctrine and expand his power by helping Emperor Maximillian Hapsburg to add Mexico to his empire.
The newly-named Emperor Maximillian, the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire, arrives in Mexico in the early 1860s with his wife Carlotta to face popular sentiment favoring Benito Juarez and popular demand for democracy. With an elite group of Mexican monarchists, Maximillian tries to appease the democratic Mexicans but he fails. Abraham Lincoln continues to support Juarez and asks the French to withdraw support for Maximilian. Carlotta goes to France to plead with Napoleon III, to no avail.Written by
Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
According to Brian Aherne, the film was to have been called 'Phantom Crown', after the novel by Bertita Harding which was one of the sources for the script. However Muni had a clause in his contract that permitted him to insist that the name of his character appear in the title. See more »
Goofs
When Pepe flees after tearing down the poster of the Imperial Decree, he is shot in the back from a distance. But when the wounded Pepe is brought to his father, the bullet wound is now in the front of his body on the right side of his chest near the shoulder. See more »
In 1952, the film was re-released and several key scenes were removed, particularly sequences that contained dialogue that criticized countries which, in 1939 had been regarded as totalitarian, but which, by the early 1950s had become Cold War allies of the United States and could therefore no longer be criticized as imperialist adventurers. Germany and Italy, especially, former enemies in the 1940s, were now the cornerstone of NATO. The removal of these scenes obfuscated the narrative considerably, in particular, removing any clear reasons behind the execution of the Emperor Maximilian at the conclusion of the film. This revised print runs 106 minutes and is the version released on video and generally available today. The 1939 version is preserved on nitrate stock in the Warner Archive. See more »
Well appointed but lumbering, miscast drama. Bette is fine, all spit and fire but John Garfield, who was embarrassed by his forced casting, is completely out of place as Porfirio Diaz with his New York accent still firmly in place. Paul Muni, a very fine actor in modern dress roles, does what he always does when heavily made up; he lets the makeup do the acting for him. The best performance is delivered by Brian Aherne but he is hampered by a bizarre beard which distracts the viewer whenever he's on screen. The lack of fluid direction makes this feel more like a history lesson than a dramatized story of an actual series of events. A good try but stodgy.
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Well appointed but lumbering, miscast drama. Bette is fine, all spit and fire but John Garfield, who was embarrassed by his forced casting, is completely out of place as Porfirio Diaz with his New York accent still firmly in place. Paul Muni, a very fine actor in modern dress roles, does what he always does when heavily made up; he lets the makeup do the acting for him. The best performance is delivered by Brian Aherne but he is hampered by a bizarre beard which distracts the viewer whenever he's on screen. The lack of fluid direction makes this feel more like a history lesson than a dramatized story of an actual series of events. A good try but stodgy.