Two classic films by Emilio Fernández translate the Mexican Revolution into melodrama, and melodrama into revolution, passionately overturning machismo of both gender and class. In Wildflower, Fernández begins his long collaboration with his perennial star Pedro Armendáriz, here cast as a landowner's rebel son who marries sharecropper's daughter Dolores Del Río as a personal expression of the egalitarian ideals of the Revolution. As each family member comes to terms with the marriage, each is drawn into the violence of this singular moment in history. The revolution itself passes in a few headlines; what is left is banditry and defiance, loyalty and grief. Sparked with humor (in the antics of two compelling amigos) and song, Indian folkloric traditions and the ballet of horses being ridden in the Spanish manner, all captured in the magnificent cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa, the film unfolds like an intimate tapestry on a huge canvas.