A gentle noir, with no profound moments of existential threat, anxiety, peril nor paranoia, Borderline (1950) is an undecided film noir, capering with the caper format at times and nudging on occasion into comedy, especially as it adopts and parades a standard series of idle Mexicana, example in the made up typecast stereo of the bumbling sombrero and the old "Si senor" routine, which blocks out the light at every turn in this cheapish escapade.
Fred MacMurray does exude some of the solid star billing for which he was renowned at the decade's turn in 1950, and Claire Trevor is a lot of fun, but seems to swing along for the ride, and the ride means bumping across the border with two consignments of drugs, hidden in a bird cage and a music box, the two places the narcs NEVER look.
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Police HQ in Borderline (1950) |
And yet, despite it all, and yet, and yet, the title Borderline is in itself quite passable as an entry in the film noir canon, shipping as it does with liminal concerns and themes. And yet there is nothing much of a borderline contained, other than the actual United States of America / United Mexican States border itself.
Leaving Borderline (1950) as a borderline noir with its borderline comic moments and a great beach landing of a small single prop plane, one can always reflect on how well Claire Trevor plays the kind of cheap broad role, here as she plays the cop pretends to be a cheap broad role, which is rather blunt in places but passable.
In the film, the white-suited bad-ass is Pete Ritchie (Raymond Burr) a cunning, ruthless drug dealer. The Feds are after him, but Ritchie can spot an agent a mile away. He's hiding out in a dusty Mexican town, using innocent tourists and paid mules to smuggle drugs into the States.
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Female cop Claire Trevor breaks through in Borderline (1950) |
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Claire Trevor in Borderline (1950) |
Domestic drug consumption, circulation and perception around the year 1950 is a dark well of concealed and misreadable information that noir may help plumb.
No decade of the recent American past is more distorted by popular culture than the 1950s. Commonly depicted as a time of complacent tranquillity and rigid conformity, American life was instead unsettled and often contentious. Much of the turmoil was linked to the rise of a youth culture of unprecedented scope and importance – one that catered to the “teenager,” a term invented in the 1950s to capture a stage of late adolescence between the dependency of childhood and the responsibility of adult life. The dynamics of the emerging youth culture often reinforced messages of conformity, but just as often they did not, and the emotions and expressiveness unleashed by rock ‘n’ roll music or adolescent pop movies could not always be monitored or checked by authority.
The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973, KATHLEEN J. FRYDL (p120)
The issues for America were many, but one was the unwillingness to discuss, and Hollywood played the largest part of all in this, by effectively closing discussion on social problems. One such example might have been the amphetamine crisis in use by truck drivers.
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Claire Trevor and Raymond Burr in Borderline (1950) |
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Claire Trevor and Raymond Burr in Borderline (1950) |
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Narcotics arrive at the hideout by mule, a literal mule in Borderline (1950) |
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Narcotics are concealed in the base of a birdcage in Borderline (1950) |
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The birdcage is sealed and checked in Borderline (1950) |
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The birdcage leaves Mexico in the front seat, but with no bird? Suspicious? Borderline (1950) |
A pivotal moment occurred in 1953 when Eastern Truck Lines, a Pennsylvania trucking company, alerted the FDA to rampant amphetamine abuse. Truckers were frequently involved in severe, inexplicable accidents, often citing an approaching car on the wrong side of the road—a hallucinatory mirage induced by drugs. These substances spurred drivers to exceed their physical limits and legal boundaries, often culminating in the tragic demise of falling asleep at the wheel.
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Claire Trevor undercover in Borderline (1950) |
The Saturday Evening Post, in 1954, chronicled such an illuminating episode. Larry Allen Rowley, overwhelmed by exhaustion, veered his truck off the road in Alabama, embarking on a "non-stop trip to eternity."
The discovery of amphetamine bottles at such crash sites became a recurring theme for police investigations. This narrative underscored the perilous consequences of drug-induced endurance, casting a stark light on the hidden dangers within the trucking industry.
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Secret coded messages in Borderline (1950) |
"As was common with heavy amphetamine use, hallucinations drove truckers to offer fabulous tales to explain their accidents, or even sometimes to speak to officers while still suffering from a delusion. One trucker who drove off the road was found asleep in his cabin and, when questioned by the police, he told them that “Benny and I were driving along very nicely and I got very sleepy. Benny was doing so well at the wheel, I decided to crawl up in the bunk and let Benny drive.”
The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973, KATHLEEN J. FRYDL
When committees interviewed self-professed addicts or consulted with medical doctors in Lexington, cocaine frequently surfaced among the substances discussed.
Harry Jacob Anslinger was an American government official who served as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the presidencies of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy. He was a supporter of Prohibition, and of the criminalization of all drugs except for alcohol, and spearheaded anti-drug policy campaigns.
Anslinger had endeavored to disregard this drug and the Central American origins from which it flowed, delegating responsibility to his rival, U.S. Customs Commissioner Ralph Kelly. However, Kelly’s enforcement portfolio became unavoidable, particularly with Texas Senator Price Daniel's involvement. Daniel, eyeing a gubernatorial bid, saw his subcommittee as a political launchpad, thus spotlighting Mexico in trafficking discussions, previously only noted for marijuana production.
Daniel emphasized the importance of border relations by conducting committee hearings in San Antonio and Houston, alongside visits to Philadelphia, New York, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit. These Texas border hearings revealed a significant yet understated issue: the immense scale of global drug exchange.
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Fred MacMurray removes an obligatory scrap of film noir tobacco from a film noir cigarette in Borderline (1950) |
Daniel was astounded by the revelations of Mexican "shooting galleries" and the daily heroin crossings by Americans. Admitting to Kelly that the border hearings unveiled unexpected truths, Daniel proposed that Customs officials track individuals crossing the border. However, this notion was impractical, as Kelly pointed out, given the immense traffic—over 50 million annual crossings between El Paso and San Ysidro—highlighting the challenge of managing such vast and complex movements.
And, to be sure, the “youth” angle had always been a popular one in the press, an easy “hook” for a sensational drug story. In 1951, the Alameda Times-Star offered a typical example, informing readers that “Federal authorities moved ... to stop teen-agers in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas from using sleeping pills and wine spiked with gasoline to produce ‘thrill jags’.” As the reporter also noted, “peddlers of the sleeping pills – known as ‘goof balls,’ ‘red birds,’ ‘yellow jackets’ or ‘blue heavens’ – even circulated among school children.” The prospect of peddlers dealing drugs to young people, particularly to young girls, had long been used as a cudgel to authorize new kinds of federal regulatory authority; only twenty years prior, Commissioner Anslinger decried opium-dealing “Chinamen” in San Francisco who seduced innocent white girls with “incense-laden” depravity.
The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973, KATHLEEN J. FRYDL
The 1950s in white middle-class America were rife with tensions and transformations, masked by a facade of harmony. While disaffected outsiders challenged dominant norms, even those who subscribed to them grappled with imposed hardships and power negotiations. The celebrated image of female domesticity hid the rising numbers of married women joining the workforce, just as the notion of the "organization man" obscured the new emotional and professional pressures on male breadwinners. Historian Alan Petigny dubbed these subtle contests a "subversive consensus," an outward conformity resting on a reworked role hierarchy.
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Couple on the run — Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor in Borderline (1950) |
The decade is often misremembered as politically stagnant under Dwight Eisenhower's leadership, a misconception arising from the tendency to equate only progressive actions with political activity. In reality, the formation of the military-industrial complex and a surge in commercial activity reshaped the American state. Government investments in infrastructure and the automobile industry enhanced commerce, enabling greater mobility for goods and people.
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Noir moments in Borderline (1950) |
Illegal drug consumption intersected with these social and economic shifts. Teenagers' drug use epitomized their transgressive behavior, weaponized by Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger to justify punitive measures. African American civil rights leaders contended with the narrative of black criminality, anchored in a depiction of Washington D.C. as drug-ridden and crime-infested. This portrayal facilitated Congress’s drive to reshape the criminal justice system.
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Drug running days in Borderline (1950) |
The illegal drug trade grew with commercial expansion, introducing synthetic drugs like barbiturates and amphetamines, predominantly consumed by white middle-class Americans. This vibrant trade strained regulatory enforcement, prompting Anslinger to push for increased criminalization while sparing his office from policing the bustling traffic in synthetic drugs, a responsibility that fell to the ill-equipped FDA. The arbitrary division between older narcotics and newer synthetics led some to question the nation's drug policy.
As the decade progressed, prominent voices began to criticize the punitive ethos of narcotics regulation. By the time John F. Kennedy took office, Anslinger faced mounting opposition, signaling a shift in the approach to drug enforcement.
Here therfore we have something far from the script and containing very little public information about drugs, other than they might be cleverly concealed in bird cages. There are two U.S. agents trying to capture Ritchie, each unaware of the other. They are both aware of the bird cage though.
The pair end up on the road to the U.S., staying overnight in a seedy hotel, carrying Ritchie’s drug shipment, a suspicious music box, a fruitcake, and a parrot. Between dodging each other and taking secret photos, their undercover operation turns into a comedic chase. With Ritchie and his goons hot on their trail, the agents navigate a dangerous game, complete with Mexican music and wisecracks.
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Film noir mooks in the hotel lobby in Borderline (1950) |
Despite the guns and noir elements, Borderline evolves into an easy-going romantic chase comedy with drugs, death, and Raymond Burr. The chemistry between Trevor and MacMurray, still oblivious to each other's true identities, shines as they trade stories about their supposed criminal pasts, showcasing their ability to keep straight faces in the midst of chaos.
And Borderline (1950) is a film noir copper caper that is out of copyright and so qualifies as a free film noir.
Borderline (1950)
Directed by William A. Seiter
Genres - Crime, Drama, Thriller | Sub-Genres - Film Noir | Release Date - Mar 1, 1950 | Run Time - 88 min.