both Tyrone Power's lead character, Pedro De Vargas, and Lee J. Cobb's Juan Garcia. De Vargas and Garcia both escape from Spain following the death of their parents, victims of Diego De Silva, a high ranking official who uses his authority from both the King and the Church to settle personal grudges. De Silva is contrasted with Father Bartolome who epitomizes a more humanistic form of institutionalized Christianity. That the Inquisition would be used to represent a certain kind of evil might be considered an easy plot point, yet King and screenwriter Lamar Trotti go beyond that by questioning the proselytizing of Indians of "the New World".

In a conversation with an Indian, a former slave of De Silva's, De Vargas is asked to justify the Spanish invasion, enslavementand imposition of religious beliefs. De Vargas states that Spain is bringing in the one true faith to replace idol worship. The response is that the Indians believe in the same god under a different name. The film ends with De Vargas marching along with Herando Cortez to an unknown destiny or fate. What struck me about Captain from Castile, at least the way I understood this film is that underneath the veneer of Hollywood spectacle was a suggestion of subversiveness regarding the sense white European privilege and the notion of manifest destiny.

Shot on location in Mexico, Captain from Castile is a more natural looking film, with none of the flamboyant use of color as in The Black Swan. The film also is indicative of some of the