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¡Alambrista!

Heroes of indie cinema Robert M. Young and Michael Roemer approached ¡Alambrista! with their customary blend of ambition and humility. Though they had already made something of a socially conscious splash with their 1964 drama of African-American life Nothing But a Man (Roemer directing, co-producing and co-writing, Young co-writing and co-producing), in 1977 the two remained largely ensconced in documentary work. Young's 1973 documentary short for television Children of the Fields put him determinedly on the path to write and direct ¡Alambrista!, a historic early depiction, in narrative film, of the undocumented migrant experience of crossing the Mexican-American border in the hope of a better life.

With Roemer at his side as a trusty producer, co-producer Young literally picked up a camera to serve as director of photography on ¡Alambrista!. The resulting simple but quietly thoughtful neorealist picaresque benefits enormously from the fast and dirty documentary approach. The story concerns Roberto Ramírez (Domingo Ambriz), who leaves his wife and newborn child in Michoacán, Mexico to cross the border into America and earn a nest egg for his family. His odyssey takes him through California, Arizona and Texas: he eludes La Migra on foot, rides the rails, and travels under the sketchy auspices of coyotes (one played by Ned Beatty, in sweaty, slippery mode). In short, it's the archetypal migrant narrative, later repeated in films like El Norte and Sin Nombre.

¡Alambrista! has languished in relative obscurity, debuting in PBS, winning the inaugural Caméra D'Or award at Cannes, then all but disappearing for two decades. Never on VHS and only hitting DVD in 2004 (packaged with a book), the film is poised for rediscovery in a Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD rerelease based on Young's 1999 director's cut. The director's cut adds footage of the late Trinidad Silva (as Joe, Roberto's upbeat guide to migrant life), trims elsewhere for a more compact narrative, and, most prominently, adds an improved soundtrack by Jose B. Cuellar. Now the film can be more fully appreciated for what it is: an influential inspiration to Latino filmmakers and a powerful, non-politicized depiction of the wages of American immigration policy.

Though there are fleeting appearances by professional actors Beatty, Edward James Olmos, Jerry Hardin (The X-Files) and Julius Harris, the film belongs mostly to nonprofessionals. In concert, Young and Ambriz effectively convey Roberto's inner life, never more apparent than in moments of confusion or quiet terrors, as Roberto's eyes shift in apprehension at situations as seemingly unthreatening as ordering "ham, eggs, coffee" from a waitress (Linda Gillin) who will obligingly make him her project or as immediately dangerous as sitting, at the same café counter, beside a policeman as a gadfly (Hardin) blithely yammers on. Perhaps precisely because the story is never insistent, the genuinely surprising twists of fate near its conclusion have a powerful impact, undimmed by the decades.