A couple of years after Hollywood made VIVA VILLA! with Wallace Beery soft-pedaling everyone’s favorite bandit revolutionary, Mexico answered with this near-classic from Fernando De Fuentes, a helmer little known up North, but a major figure during Mexico’s early sound period. The film follows the initial high spirits & eventual disillusion of six small town volunteers, affectionately dubbed ‘the lions of San Pablo.’ Pancho Villa welcomes them with dangerous assignments & quick promotions, but a revolution needs more than an oversized personality to succeed and Viila’s spontaneous military victories can’t bring a new deal for the long suffering peasants. Soon, the men are dreaming of home and wondering what they are dying for as sickness & anarchy break out. The original film elements are in pretty rough shape, but the Cinemateca/Facets DVD is good enough to show De Fuentes’ command of montage & composition, even when the character development settles for Earthy platitudes and musketeer-like comradery. Be sure to watch the horrifyingly blunt alternate ending which shows Villa in the starkest of lights. It was originally censored and you’ll know why.
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