As another poster suggested, this movie is a bit schizophrenic. The very good first half has Ricardo Montalban as a pharmaceutical company representative arriving in a regional town during a vividly captured festival in order to journey into the jungle, where he can secure rights to a substance found important to new medications. But as the festival means all local hotel rooms are booked, a local guide persuades him to go directly into the jungle. The trouble is, this man has exaggerated his familiarity with the jungle, which is full of discomforts and perils. They're soon lost, then in much worse trouble. Montalban is alone by the time he finally stumbles upon other people--which itself nearly proves fatal. Wounded but taken in after all, he is tended in part by the settlement padrone's daughter, who naturally is gaga over this strapping stranger. For his part, he isn't greatly paused by the fact that he's got a wife waiting for him to return to "civilization."
This section feels less inspired, succumbing to familiar "forbidden passions in the forbidding jungle" stuff. It doesn't help that the actress is naturally much too glam for her circumstances, yet at the same time rather shrill and neurotic rather than the ethereal Rima The Bird Girl type that the filmmakers might have had in mind. It's also problematic that her father only looks about ten years her senior (which was exactly the case, in terms of the actors' ages), and that as written Montalban's character isn't terribly sympathetic by current standards. He goes from being a belligerent barker or orders to a self-justifying marital cheat, and frankly the film does not come up with a transporting enough atmosphere to pull its melodrama off without getting somewhat clunky. Still, the ending is more graceful than one expects, and the movie as a whole is well-made. It's worth a look, although if it were a Hollywood film of the same period, it would be considered just a slightly-above-average "B" programmer.
This section feels less inspired, succumbing to familiar "forbidden passions in the forbidding jungle" stuff. It doesn't help that the actress is naturally much too glam for her circumstances, yet at the same time rather shrill and neurotic rather than the ethereal Rima The Bird Girl type that the filmmakers might have had in mind. It's also problematic that her father only looks about ten years her senior (which was exactly the case, in terms of the actors' ages), and that as written Montalban's character isn't terribly sympathetic by current standards. He goes from being a belligerent barker or orders to a self-justifying marital cheat, and frankly the film does not come up with a transporting enough atmosphere to pull its melodrama off without getting somewhat clunky. Still, the ending is more graceful than one expects, and the movie as a whole is well-made. It's worth a look, although if it were a Hollywood film of the same period, it would be considered just a slightly-above-average "B" programmer.