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,...
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,...
- 7/26/2024
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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