[.ca] Flor de Mayo

A Worthy Post Epoca Dorada Effort:
This is a reasonable effort from director Roberto Galvadón (La Otra, Macario, Gallo de Oro). Maria Felix plays a woman happily married to Pedro Armendáriz, a fisherman. They live in a simple little pueblo on the Sinaloan coast. Then a Gringo (Jack Palance) steams into port, and the story goes from there. Adapted from a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, who also wrote the story for Rudolph Valentino's silent classic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Flor de Mayo is certainly a post Epoca Dorada film: the melodrama is too strong and formulaic, Pedro Armendáriz shows his years, and the film feels longer than its 114 minutes. But it's quite interesting to see a young Jack Palance ripping off his lines in excellent Spanish whilst Maria Felix tramps around a dirty village with flowering dresses and high heels. And the color cinematography from Gabriel Figueroa over the lovely fishing hamlet of Topolobampo, Sinaloa (just north of Los Mochis, frequent port of call for the Baja ferry) will make you want to head straight for the border to squeeze limes and drink coronas. Finally, despite meandering, the film finishes quite well. It's a real Mexican dramatic experience (emphasis on the DRAMA), for better or worse. Final note: the DVD has no English subtitles. My recommendation: if you are interested in Mexican cinema and can speak Spanish, definitely buy this DVD. It's amongst the better Mexican movies of the 1950s.