We Were Strangers 1949

In Havana, a group of revolutionaries plots to topple a corrupt government. China Valdés, a bank clerk, watches as her brother Manolo distributes anti-government flyers and is shot by a plainclothes police officer on the steps of the University of Havana. She vows to kill the assassin, Armando Ariete, but at Manolo’s funeral she is drawn into a new path when an American exile named Tony Fenner asks her to join his anti-government underground group instead of pursuing personal vengeance.

Fenner learns that China’s house sits beside a cemetery and proposes an audacious plan: dig a tunnel from her home under the cemetery to reach a high-ranking official, Contreras, during his funeral, and detonate a bomb that would strike at the heart of the regime. The makeshift team includes Guillermo Montilla, a dockworker; Miguel, a bicycle mechanic; and Ramón Sánchez, a graduate student. For days they work in cramped tunnels, weighing the moral cost of killing officials who are not wholly evil and risking innocent bystanders in the process. The pressure fractures Ramón Sánchez’s sanity, and he wanders away to a traffic accident where he dies.

Meanwhile, Armando Ariete harasses China, jealous of her connection to Fenner, who reveals his Cuban birth. With the tunnel finally ready, the plan reaches its brink: Contreras is assassinated as hoped, but the funeral burial arrangements shift, causing the bomb to miss its mark. The conspirators scramble as Fenner contemplates leaving Cuba to avoid arrest, while China arranges to draw the needed funds from Fenner’s account at her bank. Fenner, embittered by the nightmare of his past and the renewed peril, rages at the stakes of their mission; China declares her love for him.

To secure the funds, China sends a colleague instead of risking her own life because she is tailed by one of Ariete’s men. Fenner chooses to return to her side, and they confront the police in a tense exchange of gunfire. China takes up a submachine gun to provide cover as Fenner hurls sticks of dynamite. He is mortally wounded, but the sound of bells rings out as the city erupts in revolution.