Robert Parrish began his Hollywood career as a teenage actor, appearing in John Ford's Four Sons and Chaplin's City Lights among other films. In the 1940s he was a noted film editor (among his credits are Robert Rossen's Body and Soul and Max Ophuls' Caught) and the films he directed in the 1950s and 1960s--including the thriller Cry Danger, The Purple Plain with Gregory Peck, and The Wonderful Country--obviously benefit from his editor's eye.
The Wonderful Country, a Western filmed in Texas and Mexico, is as realistic and moody as its locale. Robert Mitchum portrays an American who has been raised in Mexico, having fled there as a boy after avenging his father's murder. On business in Texas as a gun-runner for a Mexican overlord (Pedro Armendariz), he encounters the U.S. Army and his own anti-gringo sentiments, which identify him more as a Mexican than an American. The issue is underscored rather than resolved by his affair with an Army officer's wife (Julie London). Unique characterizations are the mark of this film, which was produced by Mitchum and imaginatively directed by Parrish.