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Known primarily as a chronicler of urban crime and corruption with noirs like In the Palm of Your Hand, The Other One, and Night Falls, Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón proved himself equally adept at tackling another popular national genre of the era, the rural melodrama, with 1952’s Soledad’s Shawl. Following a skilled doctor, Alberto Robles (Arturo de Córdova), who yearns to leave the small, remote town he works in and return to Mexico City for an important research job, Gavaldón’s film is a superb exploration of the dichotomies between urban and rural, science and superstition, and body and soul.

While the presence of Catholic morality is pervasive throughout, the film resists such trite tropes like the sinful city man learning the values of religion or coming to love the simple charms and beauty of the countryside. This rural region is seen instead as a place of grinding poverty,...

It’s a big international action epic, filmed in Mexico with a French director. Anthony Quinn is an 18th-century bandit who liberates a Mexican hamlet from marauding Yaqui Indians and a villainous Charles Bronson. Quinn is good, and all the necessary elements are present: fights, handsome scenery and a big battle… but it’s fairly tepid stuff, simplified and prettified. Leave it to Ennio Morricone’s epic music score to bind it all together. With Anjanette Comer, Sam Jaffe, Silvia Pinal and the same fifteen or so well-connected actors that cornered roles in all big Mexican films made with foreign money.

Guns for San Sebastian

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 111 min. / La bataille de San Sebastian / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date June 15, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Anjanette Comer, Charles Bronson, Sam Jaffe, Silvia Pinal, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Jaime Fernández, Rosa Furman, Leon Askin, Ivan Desny, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.,...