Le Bandit général

Revolutionaries led by Pedro Armendariz, blow into a Mexican town and turn it upside down. Disregarding the advice of old friend and priest Gilbert Roland, he falls in love with Paulette Goddard, the daughter of a wealthy man slated for execution. He pursues her, despite the fact that the sassy senorita hates his guts.

Armendariz delivers a magnetic performance and his character is an interesting one, with the General showing many sides of his multi-faceted personality.

Armendariz's and Roland, as well as the exciting takeover scenes make the first third of the film quite compelling. However, after the General and the girl meet, it all becomes more conventional and sometimes downright silly, with Goddard overacting her part, before turning a bit morbid, as the whole town is stricken with a deadly outbreak of influenza!

Overall, it's a fairly interesting film, competently directed by frequent actor Emilio Fernandez and atmospherically photographed on some excellent Mexican locations.

When I scanned the reviews for "The Torch" I was surprised. There seemed to be an equal number of reviews that gave the film a 1 as gave it a 10! The truth is that both extremes are ridiculous... the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Simply put...it cannot earn a 10 with Paulette Goddard pained up like a Mexican and providing a rather over-the-top performance. And, the film certainly isn't a 1, as that should be reserved for movies like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "The Room" or "Robot Monster"!

The story is set in the revolutionary period in Mexico---somewhere between 1910 and 1920. Many of these revolutionaries were calling for massive social upheaval...much like the one in Russia during this same time. A revolutionary general (Pedro Armendáriz) arrives in town and starts executing the rich. However, he's so taken with María Dolores Penafiel (Goddard) that he spares her rich father. The bulk of the rest of the film is the General pursuing him and the girl resisting him.

The worst part about the film, clearly, is Paulette Goddard. I must admit that I've never been a fan of her work, but here she is much worse than usual due to her being miscast as well as her occasional over-acting. She has little subtlety in her performance and in the beginning she looks addled when she makes goofy eyes at the camera (and I have no idea why). Apart from that, she often screams and is rarely subtle. And, finally, she's supposed to be a young Mexican girl...not a 40 year-old white lady painted brown. The plot isn't bad when it doesn't center on her....but too bad most of the film does. Incidentally, Armendáriz is actually pretty good...and he was a very good actor in both American and Mexican films. Overall, a rather dull film that never really pays off to watch...and repeats the refrain from "La Cucaracha" too often to be taken seriously.

It's the Mexican Revolution of a century ago, a time of great anarchy and in a town where Paulette Goddard is the town beauty and richest girl there one of many Mexican generals comes to town. Pedro Armendariz is looking to set up headquarters there. as the local warlord.

Goddard is set to marry American doctor alter Reed, but Armendariz sets uphis own campaign to win her in is own boorish way. Will she stay with Reed or respond to Armendariz?

The Torch is a remake of a Mexican production Enamorada with Armendariz in h same part. Goddard is added for some American box office draw and Gilbert Roland who is of Mexican ancestry shaves his mustachw and becomes a priest here. Not a typical Roland part but he carries it off.

For fans of he principal players.

El Nace del Amor mixes romance and melodrama with historic and military drama set in a late 19th century Mexican town. The story centers on a few very strongly realized characters - Maria Dolores (Paulette Godard) Jose Juan (Pedro Armendariz), Father Sierra (Gilbert Roland) and Dr. Stanley (Walter Reed). Maria Dolores is a headstrong and lovely young upper middle class woman who is engaged to an American doctor (Reed) who has settled in the town. Father Sierra is a community-leading priest and Jose Juan is a revolutionary general who brings unsolicited agrarian reform to the town and falls in love with Maria Dolores.

Jose Juan (who is remarkably well-played by Armendariz) and Maria Dolores are the most dramatic and unpredictable characters of the lot. Father Sierra, who has known the General since they were both young, makes it clear that Jose Juan is a principled man, but his bloody revolution and generally aggressive and angry demeanor do not seem to sit well with this representation. Maria Dolores is intelligent, intuitive, passionate and virtuous, but also inexperienced and a bit naive. Although the revolutionary occupation of the town and the calamities that beset the place at the time comprise most of the threads of the nicely woven plot, the romance between Dr. Stanley, Maria and Jose Juan is the fundamental story in El Nace.

Goddard's performance is not one of her best, but she does an admirable job of playing a woman who was probably about half her age (Godard was 48 when the film was released).

Filmed in Mexico and shot in English with Spanish subtitles, veteran Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez's directing and cinematography are surprisingly superb. Each shot is very nicely composed and the camera usually makes up for occasional weaknesses in the acting and the script. There are a few problems with the editing which do not really detract from the value of the story. The few war scenes, though they do not approach the blood and guts realism of today's military adventures, are startlingly vivid and a bit scary.

Despite my praises, the film has quite a few tedious moments which are important from the perspective of character development, but which do not stand up to the test of time.

Interesting from a cultural and historical perspective, and as a well-made low budget early independent, El Nace del Amor is recommended for film buffs and students of cinematography. While it is hardly a classic, it is a good story well told.

You have to have like zero sense of Mexican history and culture not to understand the multiple levels of thematic development and narrative going on in this film. And unfortunately some of the reviews on this film evidence just that lack of sense.

The Mexican revolution (roughly 1910-1920) was one of the most confusing - and bloodiest - in the annals of national political developments in the West. Perhaps only the Spanish Cuivil War could equal it for ferocity, and that only lasted less than half as long. An entire generation was shaped by the slaughter but also by the struggle to establish a national identity at last committed to some principle of legitimate democratic governance. The legacy - and the problems -continue.

The leading male, General Reyes (based loosely on Zapata), is a complex character; he is hardly a saint - he passes judgment on a wealthy businessman (who has raise the prices of necessities to prevent their purchase by the poor) and has him executed. Is he authoritarian murderer and thief? Or is he trying to establish and enforce a new law? Can this be determined in a time of revolution, when the very question of what constitutes legitimacy is at issue? Yet we are given to know that he can love individuals - and also the people as a whole, when an influenza epidemic breaks out and he orders his men to help the stricken, even at the risk of their own lives - and his.

The relationship between Reyes and the wealthy landowner's daughter Maria will probably not make much sense unless you understand that Mexican culture is profoundly Romantic in the 19th Century usage of that term. Both Reyes and Maria are fiercely struggling to determine how to maintain their individuality while pursuing a courtship threatening to engulf them both. Their resolution - allowing the revolution to seal their fates together - is pure (Percy) Shellyan. (This is a very tough-minded romance, and only a true Romantic would know what that means. The closest Hollywood came to it is Gone With The Wind which this film resembles, as a rather compressed variant at 80 minutes - and maybe Casablanca.)

As to the film-making - it is glorious - absolutely beautiful cinematography, exquisitely taut direction, brilliant performances by the leading actors. The editing is a bit rugged, but it may have to be. I was at first confused by the influenza epidemic sequence - it is all smoke, darkness, sudden jump cuts and time ellipses - until I realized that this was as intended. Director Fernandez knew that his audience wanted a battle to decide the fates of the characters, but also recognized that this would spoil the romance. So the epidemic displace military engagement; nonetheless, it too is a battle, a battle to survive, and so must be both confusing and threatening, involving the loss of life and the definition of the personalities at risk and how they respond to it.

That is intuitive film-making, and very risky, and brilliant if pulled off well. And I think it is. The ending, for me, was emotionally staggering, but only Reyes' and Maria's collective endeavors to survive the epidemic - and help others during it - could properly prepare me for it.

An absolutely knockdown film. The existing prints - the one at Internet Archive I saw was a Mexican television edit, and I've read of worse - are not great, and maybe lacking episodes. Still what is available makes proper claim that this ought to stand as a (perhaps minor, but necessary) classic of commercial film-making. God knows what was going through RKO's Hollywood brains when they decided to make a Mexican film by a Mexican director (in English, with US actors), but thank god they did.

(BTW influence: Undoubtedly seen by Sam Peckinpah who hired Fernandez to play Mapache in the Wild Bunch - note certain character similarities. Probably also seen in Europe, where it would have earned more respect than in the US, I suggest Sergio Leone may very well have been a fan, note similarity of certain shots, certain relationships, certain characters, to those in The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.)