The initial melodrama in de Fuentes's trilogy about the Mexican Revolution portrays a tragic incident involving a corrupt army colonel (the corpulent Alfredo del Diestro) who is ordered to execute a prisoner, and through his own conniving unwittingly sacrifices his long-lost son. According to critic Federico Serrano, “As opposed to most of the Mexican or foreign directors who have dealt with this theme, from Emilio Fernandez to Elia Kazan, de Fuentes does not give his films an epic or grandiloquent air. In his work, the Revolution is a social phenomenon . . . Prisoner Number 13 does not deal with the Revolution directly.” A careful mix of subtle gesture and deliberate cadence, this austere film nevertheless denounces the corruption of entrenched authority and the moral decline of those who thrive on it. No wonder then that the military should find Prisoner Number 13 to be subversive. In the almost illogical epilogue, we can detect the censor's authoritarian hand.