Several successive takes were ruined by the bit actor playing the customs man, who became terrified on seeing the huge entourage of booms, lights, cameras, actors, and vehicles bearing down on him determinedly from across town. He kept forgetting his single line, ruining the entire take. Don t just put your face in your hands and say, Oh, my God, I m sorry. In the end, the dialogue was dubbed. It was Welles who made Venice, California double for Los Robles, a Mexican border town.
Few films have such a profoundly allegorical sense of place.
We can smell garbage and waste oil blowing in on the hot Mexican wind. With its rundown hotel rooms and stinking barrooms, Los Robles is the grimy summa of all the cracked and faded towns in the whole history of film noir. Here, in the shadow of a clanking oil derrick, in a trash-filled lagoon, is where dreams go to die.