El río y la muerte

In this film ,the great director pits an obsolete world (the vendetta , eye for an eye , tooth for a tooth ) against the modern scientific background of a son who is expected to avenge his father ;the contrast between the urban background where the young doctor is to work and the archaic and macho village is striking ;that two worlds can still cohabit may seem startling ,even in the fifties ; this is not typically Mexican ; in some Mediterranean regions (Sicily,Corsica ) it endured through the early twentieth century.

With a genius such the director, one has a tendency to show oneself demanding ; but his touch can be felt no and then: the depiction of the "tradition" recalls the documentary side of "los hurdes" :the survivor swimming across the river ,some kind of Styx which is some frontier between the living and the dead ,filmed in the darkest night , the black coffin of his victim on the boat ; the painting is almost surrealist ;so are the skeletons at the beginning .

In his highly superior "Viridiana" (1961) ,Bunuel would resume the obsolete/modern subject .While the heroine ,steeped in piety ,entertains all the bums of the village, her cousin, a pragmatic resolute man ,develops his estate .