Roberto Gavaldon's 1954 Sombra Verde begins like a science fiction film. A jungle root can be used to make cortisone, a substance that the film touts as a miracle cure. We see banner headlines announcing that this tropical root will change the face of medicine and usher in a new era. In a laboratory, white-coated scientists are laboring over their potions. A handsome young man, Federico, is dispatched to the jungle near Vera Cruz to scout the forests for this precious root. (None of this makes any sense: what is Federico supposed to be looking for? Why is he sent into the perilous rain forest alone?) With dizzying rapidity, the scene shifts to a picturesque old city, Papantla, so-called "the vanilla city" where the Corpus Christi festival is underway. Indigenous campesinos are dancing in the streets and voladors whirl around an enormous pole, flying upside-down in a spectacle that is part Hollywood via Mexico and part National Geographic. The best jungle guide in town is at the peak of the Totonoc volador pole. When he descends to the throngs in the streets, Federico tries to hire him. But the man says he has duties to his community and is integral to the Corpus Christi festivities. No amount of money will entice him to guide Federico through the jungle. Pedro, Federico's porter who is carrying his luggage, offers to guide the scientist and, within six minutes of the title sequence, the two men with their pack horses are hacking their way through the forest primeval.
Sombra Verde was released in a dubbed, expurgated version in the US. The film stars Ricardo Montalban who spends most of his time in the film shirtless, displaying his impressive torso. At 87 minutes long, the movie chugs forward efficiently and it is, in fact, very entertaining and, even, powerful -- the script is literate and intelligent and the acting has the iconic quality of big budget pictures of the era; it's all over-emphatic, lucid, and larger-than-life. Released as Untouched in the US, and promoted by an advertising campaign that focused on the leading lady's breasts, the movie divides into two parts. In the first half of the movie, the hero treks through the jungle, nearly perishing in the green hell. The second half of the film invokes Shakespeare's The Tempest -- it's a torrid melodrama with lushly erotic sequences. Both parts of the movie are effective and one of the pleasures of this sort of picture are its occasional lapses into idiocy -- for instance, in one scene, we are shown an orangutan doing gymnastics in a tree: how did an orangutan make its way from Borneo into the jungles in Vera Cruz? Very quickly, Federico and his incompetent guide, Pedro, get lost in the woods. The two men distrust one another. When Pedro lunges at Federico with his machete, the scientist draws his gun only to learn (to his embarrassment) that the guide was defending him against a venomous snake. Federico becomes fixated on morbid thoughts. Pedro tells him that these thoughts, whispering to a man to remain in the jungle, are the so-called "green shadow" from which one must free one's self as if from the allure of a femme fatale. A deadly adder bites Pedro and he dies, pleading with Federico to give him a Christian burial. Federico tries to dig into the stony soil of the jungle but fails to make much of a hole so he puts poor Pedro head-down over his horse and continues his desperate march through the forest. Vultures attack and Federico has to fend them off, using up his ammunition by shooting at the menacing black birds. Despairing, Federico gives himself up as lost and doomed. Then, he hears dogs barking, follows the sound, and encounters an idyllic landscape of gushing water, cascades, and a thundering waterfall. As he crosses a suspension bridge to an inhabited island, a man appears, imperious with flashing eyes. The man (this is Ignacio the proprietor of this tropical paradise) slashes the rope from which the bridge hangs and Federico, dead Pedro, and the two horses are plunged into the swift white water and, after struggles, borne over the brink of the 160 foot waterfall. (This is a disturbing sequence because it appears that the two horses were really pitched into the river and, apparently, die in the fall over the waterfall cliff.) The jungle trek scenes are impressive, filmed on location with a camera moving inexorably through the vines and undergrowth. There's an excellent storm scene with lightning strikes and trees blazing like torches in the downpour.
The second half of the film takes place at El Paraiso,("paradise"), Don Ignacio's isolated hacienda surrounded by columns of cascading water and near a huge lake with a pulpit-like rock formation on its banks. Federico has a broken leg which Ignacio and his servant Maxim mend with primitive splints and traction. Ignacio's beautiful daughter, stipulated to be about 15 or 16, is child of nature and is immediately attracted to the hunky Federico. Without any preliminary flirting, she announced that she wants Federico to be her man. (The girl named Yascara is played by Ariadne Welker, then 23, and, later, a fixture in Mexican horror films as a "scream queen"; she also worked with Bunuel as well in that director's excellent The Crime of Archibold Cruz). Unfortunately, Federico is married; his wife, who doesn't appear in the film, is "civilized" and the opposite of the impulsive and sexually aggressive jungle girl. Yascara intends to have her way with Federico. She courts him on the edge of the lake, squatting in the rocky pulpit with her thighs suggestively spread, and, later dives into the water, emerging with her sheer blouse completely transparent. (The producers of the film, the Calderon brothers, later embarked on a course of so-called "nudie" films featuring topless actresses; Sombra Verde is sometimes considered the first of those kinds of movies.) Although Federico tries to resist Yascara's allure, he fails. She embraces him while holding a wounded bird and, in the throes of passion, crushes the little animal in her fist. When Federico is back on his feet and plans to depart from El Paraiso, Yascara takes a machete and kills the two horses that would have carried him away. (The vicious Kristi Noem's autobiography has a chapter called "A Bad Day to Be a Goat" in which she boasts about killing a pet dog and a goat -- Sombra Verde could be subtitled a "a bad day to be a horse, snake, or bird".) She threatens suicide if he leaves her. Things are far from perfect in paradise; we learn that Don Ignacio's wife, Irene, had a love affair with an oil engineer and pilot -- this resulted in Ignacio killing her while his servant Maxim hacked the paramour to death. Some mounted policemen appear and indicate that Federico's wife has made her way to Papantla and is waiting there for her husband. Federico departs with the police setting up a spectacular romantic climax -- Yascara emotes with the waterfalls in the background; Federico emotes and smolders with a tableaux of mountains over his shoulder; there are huge yearning close-ups and a voice-over repeats earlier dialogue that emphasizes the importance of freedom and making a decision on the basis of free will -- "return to the city, but when you find that you can't live there, come back to El Paraiso to your true love." Yascara is poised on the brink of the huge falls and ready to jump. If she plunges to her death, this isn't shown at the end of the movie.
Sombra Verde is salacious nonsense, but it's an exceptionally beautiful film, gorgeously shot by Alex Phillips, a Canadian-born cameraman. The plot is simple and mythic in form but the movie is very well-written and gripping. The location shooting is superb -- the scenes in Papantla are wonderful and brilliantly exploit the colonial architecture in the city; there's some great footage of the Pyramid of the Niches located at Taijin. The jungle is a brooding, palpable presence in the movie. The second-half of the film is suffused with sex -- we see Yascara, for instance, hand-pollinating vanilla blossoms; she explains that plants are male and female as well. Ariadne Welker looks like an Italian movie star -- she said that the only Mexican blood in her came by "transfusion" (both of her parents were expatriate Europeans -- and she is clad in simple, stylish white clothing; she looks fresh and cool as if she has just come from a tennis court on which she didn't exert herself that much. The scene in which her breasts are visible, certainly, makes its point forcefully enough. The movie is very good and the DVD comes with some excellent extras including an informative commentary track. It's a Powerhouse UK DVD.
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