Charitable charlatans, clumsy womanizers, enigmatic dames and even a monster-fighting paladin captured the imagination of Mexico’s audiences during the mid-20th-century golden age of the country’s film industry.
An era of prolific production in all genres and of stars with exclusive studio contracts, it rivaled the Hollywood system in the quality and variety of its output. Today, most homegrown Mexican productions struggle to find screens amid the ubiquitous presence of American blockbusters that entice local moviegoers.
But from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Mexican cinema thrived partly as a consequence of American involvement in World War II. With American resources being allocated to the war effort, Mexican companies saw an opportunity to produce movies for and about their own country that could also travel to other Spanish-speaking territories.
Featuring titles largely from this period, the retrospective “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema” begins Friday at Film at Lincoln Center. Entertainment made for the masses, these movies often set their sights on unlikely heroes and heroines who, despite personality quirks or individual circumstances, exhibited a sturdy moral compass and unshakable pride. They (mostly) do what’s right in the end, even if human weaknesses obstruct their best intentions more than once.
For several decades after their original theatrical runs, most of these films endured in the collective Mexican consciousness and continue to influence popular culture through their uninterrupted availability on broadcast TV. As a child in 1990s Mexico City, I caught fragments when visiting my grandmothers for whom the men and women then on the small screen had been larger than life in their youth.
I would later watch these films in full when cinephilia took hold in my adolescence. And though I never stopped associating the narratives with a past that seemed rather distant, their colorful colloquial jargon — without the curse words that so floridly adorn Mexican Spanish — always felt very much present through the people around me.
The Lincoln Center selection, which spotlights some of the country’s most emblematic actors and craftspeople, had to include Mario Moreno, a.k.a. Cantinflas, arguably Mexico’s most beloved comedic actor. Of his vast catalog, “The Unknown Policeman” (1941) represents him here. Known for his onscreen persona as an inarticulate, impoverished yet self-assured and mischievously witty scoundrel, Cantinflas plays a charming vagabond turned cop through a chance encounter with thieves, then goes on to become a tycoon in the diamond business.
This farsa grotesca, or grotesque farce, as the genre was called, curiously opens with a reverential disclaimer about its depiction of the police force, assuring viewers that the ineptitude on display is imaginary and that the filmmakers have no intention of disparaging the Mexican police. The story, the title cards suggest, could occur in any of the world’s metropolises. Such solemn consideration for law enforcement seems unthinkable in modern Mexican cinema, where the image of the police now almost exclusively elicits overt cynicism, disdain and ridicule.
The mustachioed Charlie Chaplin-like performer’s peculiar manner of stringing sentences birthed the slang term “cantinflear” to describe the act of talking without making much sense. And in “The Unknown Policemen,” the first of 33 features Cantinflas made with director Miguel Melitón Delgado, his hilarious inability to communicate clearly functions as a catalyst for both his lucky breaks and avoidable mishaps. From the exasperation of those interacting with him, as well as his utter obliviousness, humor arises.
Then there’s the comedia ranchera — comic cowboy stories set in the Mexican countryside with prominent musical performances. In the retrospective, “The Three Garcias” follows a trio of feuding cousins, all macho men-children named Luis. Their intergenerational animosity (their fathers also hated one another) distresses their authoritarian grandmother, played by the venerable Sara García (whose image graces the packaging of the well-known Abuelita Mexican hot chocolate).
The superstar Pedro Infante, a gallant leading man and singer who died young, plays one of the stubborn Garcias, the oft-inebriated, rough-around-the-edges Luis Antonio. Romantic songs and high jinks ensue when the men’s American-born cousin, Lupita (Marga López), visits. Now their main squabble is over her attention. But as is the case in plenty of Mexican films from this era, perhaps surprisingly, women are shrewd and not easily swayed. Conversely, the common denominator among the leading men is a proclivity for flirtatiousness in the company of women. Their luck with the ladies played as aspirational fodder for the men in the audience.
(Now, after living in the United States for more than two decades, I notice how these fictions suggest that relations between Mexico and the United States were less contentious than they are now. Not only do American characters recur throughout the films of this era, but occasionally Mexican talent could also find work in American productions. Cantinflas, for example, starred in “Around the World in 80 Days” (1956), for which he received a Golden Globe.)
Another dazzling star in the firmament of Mexican actors, the suave Germán Valdés, better known as Tin-Tan, grew up in Ciudad Juárez, just across from El Paso, and incorporated Mexican American slang into his performances, often wearing a zoot suit typical of pachucos on this side of the border. That’s the case in the Mexico City comedy “The King of the Neighborhood.” The title is the nickname bestowed on Tin-Tan’s character by everyone in his humble apartment complex and beyond for his generosity to anyone in need.
In their eyes he’s an honest railroad worker, but the money he shares comes from criminal activities committed with a band of delinquents who fear him. With effortless charisma and swagger, Valdés delights in the absurd misadventures of a nice guy pretending to be a heartless villain to finance good deeds.
Two strikingly similar entries in the filmography of María Félix, the most glamorous and best known of the Mexican screen divas, will screen in the series: “Amok” (1944) and “May God Forgive Me” (1948). Both set during World War II, they see the actress embody women with mysterious identities who are deviously entangled with wealthy men.
In “May God Forgive Me,” Félix is a European refugee working as a spy to save her daughter. In “Amok,” based on a Stefan Zweig novella, Félix plays two women, a blonde and a brunette, who cross paths with a doctor on the run. Félix’s regal elegance and icy temperament, especially toward the men who pursued her on and off the screen, graced her with an incomparable allure that makes her every moment in the frame unmissable.
And to more decidedly step away from reality and plunge into the fantastic, the Lincoln Center showcase includes one of the many sagas in which the valiant masked luchador El Santo (Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta) faces supernatural foes. “Santo vs. the Vampire Women” delivers precisely what its title promises: a genre-bending cult film with a hero thwarting the evil plans of a pack of sexy bloodsuckers.
Watching these mainstream movies made with Mexicans in mind can certainly help viewers expand their understanding of the longstanding moviegoing culture of Mexico and the stories that resonated there. For others with more history with these movies, a rush of unadulterated nostalgia is in order.
For more information on “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema,” go to filmlinc.org.
Read More: Unlikely Heroes and Heroines in These Gems From Mexico Cinema’s Golden Age
