Bosley Crowther on Roberto Gavaldón's "Macario" (1960):
"So seldom do our own filmmakers come up with a good folk tale or do better than an animated cartoon in the way of fantasy that it remains for the foreign filmmakers to send one along now and then. Such a one—a combination of both genres—arrived yesterday at the Fifth Avenue Cinema. It is the Mexican film 'Macario', and it tells an insinuating tale of a poor peasant who meets Death in the forest one day and is presented by him with miraculous healing powers.
(...)
Roberto Gavaldon's direction is remarkably fluid and strong, rich in human revelations and vivid pictorial qualities. The peasant is played superbly by Ignacio Lopez Tarso, a young man who can slip from expressions of pathos into flashes of bumpkin drollery and move on into wistful serenity with beguiling grace and taste. In the role of his wife, Pina Pellicer, the Mexican actress who was seen in "One Eyed Jacks" with Marlon Brando, is a compound of poignance and melting sympathies. Enrique Lucero is gaunt and yet not heavy—rather cheerful, indeed—as Death, and several others are sardonic and amusing as astonished characters."
("The Screen: 'Macario':Folk Tale-Fantasy of Mexico in Premiere", Bosley Crowther, The NY Times, 1961)
P.S: On this day, 66 years ago, "Macario" (1960) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, France.