Charles Rooner Movies

The Mexican Se le Fue la Mano (Overdoing It) is a perfect showcase for the comic expertise of Abel Salazar. The star is cast as a popular stage comedian who marries a fading actress, played by Martha Roth. The marriage seems doomed from the start, with the couple clashing egos at the slightest opportunity. After a contentious divorce, both husband and wife try to recapture their youth through a series of romantic entanglements. Suffice to say that it's extremely difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. Critics in 1953 were enchanted by the finale of Se le Fue la Mano, which offered two endings, one happy, the other less so (Bob Hope pulled off the same gimmick in his like-vintage Casanova's Big Night). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gabriel Figueroa's evocative photography makes the Mexican-American co-production The Pearl seem a more significant piece of filmmaking than it really is. Based on John Steinbeck's short novel, The Pearl is the tragic fable of a simple Mexican fisherman (Pedro Armendariz) who finds a valuable pearl and begins fantasizing about untold wealth and luxury for himself and family. His more sensible wife (Maria Elena Marques) is uncertain as to whether the pearl is an omen of good luck, but soon she, too, falls under its spell. The couple's naivete leads to their being exploited and brutalized by sharpsters and thieves. Before the fisherman angrily hurls the pearl back into the sea, the gem brings about nothing but death and despair. Co-scripted by Steinbeck, director Emil Fernandez, and Jack Wagner, The Pearl was filmed on location in Mexico, using the facilities of the RKO-owned Churubusco Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two great Latin singing stars team up in this musical melodrama directed by the innovative Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Gerardo (Jorge Negrete) and his friend Demetrio (Julio Villarreal) are a pair of footloose cowboys in turn-of-the-century Mexico who are looking for work after escaping from prison on dubious charges. Gerardo persuades Jose (Francisco Jambrina), an tycoon from Argentina who is looking for oil in Mexico, to give work to himself and his friends, but just as their fortunes are on the rise, the oilman disappears and is feared murdered. Jose's sister Mercedes (Libertad Lamarque) travels to Mexico to find out what's become of him, and when she learns that Gerardo has taken over as manager in Jose's absence, she's convinced that Gerardo and his pals are to blame. Wanting to know more about Gerardo and his cronies, she takes a job as a singer as "Gran Casino," a rowdy nightclub near the oil fields; in time, she strikes up a romance with the good-hearted roughneck and learns just who her brother's enemies really are. Gran Casino was Luis Bunuel's first project after settling in Mexico in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and an unsuccessful attempt to seek asylum in the United States; an uncharacteristically conventional story which was not well suited to Bunuel's talents (and a musical to boot), Gran Casino fared poorly at the box office, and it was two years before he'd get to make his next film, El Gran Calavera. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The combined talents of star Maria Felix and director Fernando De Fuentes resulted in the can't-miss romantic drama Dona Barbara. Felix is cast as the title character, a rich landowner who has accumulated her fortune through the kindness of strangers-handsome, amorous strangers to whom she has sold her affections. Renouncing true love in favor of material gains, Dona Barbara ultimate falls desperately in love with neighboring rancher Santos Luardos (Julian Soler). Her euphoria evaporates when she learns that Santos is interested only in her young daughter Marisela (Maria Marques). Completed in 1943, Donna Barbara earned several industry awards in Mexico, and not a few similar honors elsewhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide