El Prisionero 13 (Prisoner 13) and El compadre Mendoza (Godfather Mendoza)

Fate deals Julian Carrasco an unimaginable hand in the 1939 film El Prisionero 13 (Prisoner 13). A wanton, violent drunk who long ago lost his wife and young son, Carrasco is a corrupt soldier in the Mexican army. He takes a bribe to exchange an innocent man for a condemned prisoner. It’s an easy plan — arrest someone else, anyone else, and substitute the new captive for the guilty man at the time of execution. Carrasco has no qualms about sending an innocent man to his death, but then again, Carrasco doesn’t know that the young man he’s just arrested is his own son.

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• Rosalio Mendoza
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Also showing this weekend is El compadre Mendoza (Godfather Mendoza), a 1934 satire that examines the lengths to which the ambitious landowner Rosalio Mendoza will go in order to appease both the government and the revolutionaries. He alternately hangs a portrait of a famous Mexican general leading the army troops and one of revolutionary Pancho Villa, depending on who’s visiting.

The two films are the final pair being screened in the Classic Mexican Cinema series at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which is about life during the revolution and its impact on everyday citizens. El Prisionero 13 screens at 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday, El compadre Mendoza screens at 8:45 p.m. Saturday and 6:45 p.m. Sunday. 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7515 or visit www.mfah.org/films. $6 to $7.
Sat., Aug. 21, 7 & 8:45 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 22, 5 & 6:45 p.m., 2010