El Gavilan Pollero // Pedro Infante / Antonio Badu / Lilia Prado

I saw this movie over and over again. It was hilarious, witty, made you want to smack Pedro for flirting with other women, but he played this character very well. Pedro's character was constantly drinking, but now adays, you can't just jump on a horse and ride off. The friendship that was shared by these two stranger after meeting is very rare and I wish there were more friends to share something special like they did. It felt so natural. Lilia Prado played a simular part in La Vida no Vale Nada. Not getting the man that she wanted, so she sets out to ruin a relationship between father and son and in this movie, best friends. To me this movie was worth watching over and over again. Thanks Amazon.

They advertise this movie as a colored movie but came in black and white. Anyways I love this movie.

Todas las Peliculas de Pedro Infante que conosco son buenas Peliculas y esta no es la excepcion. Llego antes del tiempo prometido, se mira bien.

Very good movie

In "El Gavilan Pollero" Pedro Infante plays Jose, a scoundrel of a fellow, who gets his girlfriend of many years, Antonia (Lilia Prado), involved in his schemes. When she tires of his womanizing, she takes their ill-gotten gains from a fixed horse race, and leaves him. Jose steals the horse and escapes, and meets up with Luis (Antonio Badu), who is "mal hablado, boracho y jugador," and like birds of a feather, they form a "blood brother" bond, and a friendship that is "amistad y pura verdad." After many adventures, they end up in the big city, where the mambo is the craze, and who should be the featured dancer at the Club La Sirena but Antonia! There begins a story of manipulation and revenge, as Antonia pits one friend against the other.There are many songs, the big number for Infante being "Ella" by Jose Alfredo Jimenez. The mambo scenes are hilarious, as the ranch guys try to dance like the city folk, and there are many funny scenes and some wild slapstick in this film, which could be classified as a melodramatic comedy. Both Infante and Badu are terrific, and Rogelio Gonzalez, who directed many of Infante's films, is at the helm, with lovely black & white cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa. No subtitles available.Pedro Infante (1917-1957), was Mexico's most loved singer/actor, and 50 years after his untimely passing when he crashed his plane in the Yucatan, he reigns supreme, and his many films and recordings are national treasures.

Before criticizing this film, let me make clear that I have loved Mexican canciones and rancheras since childhood, and that I am a fan of Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and other singers who, for me, were at the heart of the Golden Age of this music and movies (the 40's). In "El Gavilan Pollero", Infante portrays a scoundrel who, it seems, is drunk most of the time he is on camera. Perhaps, a drunken scene or two would elicit laughs, and perhaps his fans would applaud their idol's acting skills in being so convincing as a drunk, but an entire movie? If one did not know that the great Pedro Infante is the actor, I doubt that most people would laugh at or with, and much less like the character he portrays: an adulterer who sees all women as sex toys to be fondled and kissed, who cheats and steals, whose best friend is a kindred spirit, who is drinking or drunk all the time, and who justifies all this conduct with a phrase that has become a cliche: "Yo soy un hombre". Lamentably, it gives viewers the wrong image of the Mexican or Latin "hombre", and I hope to God it was not meant to be a depiction of what most Mexican males thought of themselves in the middle of the last century. If it is, then this film can be used to teach future generations what "machismo" was all about and why it has been repudiated in our times. Now, if like me, you watch these old films with the hope of hearing Infante sing - and what a singer he was! - then you will thrill to arguably the best rendition of the classic Jose Alfredo Jimenez song "Ella". But alas! - to my taste it was the only song in the entire movie which made viewing the film worthwhile, and why I gave the movie three stars and not one. In summation, and to paraphrase a line delivered by the female lead in the movie when talking about Infante's character: his character, and the movie, are like a rooster that has been de-clawed.