Considered the single most important film director in Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s, Fernando de Fuentes (1894–1958) aspired to make the Mexican film industry as accomplished, efficient, and diverse as its Hollywood model while remaining culturally authentic. Not an easy task, but as producer, writer, and sometimes editor of his own films, de Fuentes knew talent and had the clout to get it: the actresses Maria Felix (Mexico's Dietrich) and Lupe Vélez, and the actor/singer Jorge Negrete, among others, gained their considerable cult followings in his films, while the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa received the prize at Venice for Allá en el rancho grande, his debut film. For de Fuentes, who relished genre, to remain authentically national meant exploiting certain myths and exploding others. Today's critics fault him for the folkloric nostalgia of the comedias rancheras in which everyone is muy contento-especially the men, and most especially the patrón. But in his best-known works, his trilogy on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), de Fuentes, who was a teenager in 1910, came to his subject questioning the very meaning of war, using the heroic period to explore themes of personal betrayal and corruption. These films, which helped define the Revolution for the popular imagination, are the centerpiece of our small tribute to de Fuentes, which also includes populist entertainments with Vélez and Negrete shown in their Bay Area premiere revivals.