Captain from Castile (1947) on Netflix
Pedro de Vargas, a caballero in 1518 Spain, offends Diego de Silva, an officer of the Inquisition. He flees with Juan García and Catana Pérez and joins Cortés's expedition to Mexico.
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Plot summary
Near Jaén in the spring of 1518, the Castilian caballero Pedro de Vargas helps Coatl, an Aztec slave, escape his master Diego de Silva, who enforces the Inquisition as el supremo of the Santa Hermandad and is Pedro's rival for Lady Luisa de Carvajal. Pedro also steps in when de Silva's men go after the barmaid Catana Pérez, and at her inn he meets Juan García, an adventurer newly returned from the New World. De Silva has Pedro and his family jailed on a charge of heresy. Aided by Catana's brother Manuel, a sympathetic jailer, Pedro, Juan and Catana leave Spain and sign on with Hernán Cortés for his expedition to Mexico.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Captain from Castile (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A scene with the Dominican Inquisitor Ignacio de Lora, to be played by John Burton, was cut from Captain from Castile; one source attributed the excision to censorship by Rev. John J. Devlin of the National Legion of Decency, who found the depiction of the Spanish Inquisition unacceptable to the Catholic Church.
- The volcano Parícutin, which had erupted in 1943 and was still active, appears in the background of many of the film's Cholula scenes; the final scene, with thousands of Indian porters, was shot on the edge of its lava beds, and its ash cloud often made lighting bad for filming.
- More than 19,500 Mexican inhabitants were used as extras on Captain from Castile, about 4,500 of them in the final sequence shot in front of Parícutin's smoking cinder cone.
- With Tyrone Power still in the army, Fox announced in July 1945 that Cornel Wilde, fresh from A Song to Remember, and Linda Darnell would play the leads; by August, Power was back from service as a Marine Corps aviator and Wilde was out.
- When Zanuck's Forever Amber, with the inexperienced Peggy Cummins in the title role, became a disaster after $1 million had been invested, Linda Darnell replaced Cummins and the role of Catana in Captain from Castile went to the then unknown Jean Peters in November 1946.
- Newman gave the rights to the film's final march to the University of Southern California as the theme music for its football team; known as "Conquest", it is played by the Spirit of Troy marching band and is the corps anthem of the Boston Crusaders Drum and Bugle Corps.
- Alfred Newman, Fox's longtime musical director, recorded excerpts of his score for 78 rpm records, reportedly at his own expense, and donated the royalties to the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
- Mankiewicz recommended actors for Captain from Castile who were not cast: Fredric March as Cortés, José Ferrer as Coatl, and either Alan Reed or William Bendix as Juan García.
