Based on a story by B. Traven (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and set in colonial Mexico, Roberto Galvadon’s 1959 rags-to-riches fable combines magical realism and folkloric elements of Mexico’s Indianist movement with results that are alternately comic and poignant. An impoverished peasant shares his dinner with the grim reaper, who rewards him with an elixir that can revive the terminally ill. The peasant runs a profitable healing practice until jealous neighbors rat him out to the Inquisition. Gabriel Figueroa did the haunting cinematography. In Spanish with subtitles.