Mexican cinema
The term Mexican cinema refers to the set of film productions made in Mexico or abroad by a team of professionals and with a budget that is, for the most part, of Mexican origin. It has its antecedents in the different "views" made in the country by Gabriel Veyre and Ferdinand Von Bernand (envoys of the Lumière brothers) in 1896 (127 years ago). Mexican film production is one of the most outstanding in Latin America, although as an industry it has maintained an irregular profile since the end of the period known as the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, a stage in which the Mexican industry achieved its highest international penetration (predominantly in Latin America and Spain). Starting in 1898 (125 years ago), the first Mexican and foreign filmmakers appeared, and national cinema evolved from the initial views, reaching a considerable technical and creative level during the following decade. Before they could pay with $5 for 15 shows, around the time of the 1980s and 1990s.
History
Beginnings
Cinema arrived in Mexico almost twelve months after its appearance in Paris, thanks to the visit of Gabriel Veyre and Ferdinand Von Bernard, envoys from the Lumière Brothers. They staged a cinematographic performance inside the Chapultepec castle, which was witnessed by President Porfirio Díaz, his family, and members of his cabinet. Newspapers of the time noted that the attendees were captivated by the presentation of views and marveled at the the new invention that featured the moving image.
After its successful private debut, the film was presented to the public on August 14 of that same year, in the basement of the Plateros drugstore, on the street of the same name (today Madero). From Mexico City. The public packed the mezzanine of the small venue —a repetition of the session in the basement of the Café de Paris, where the cinematograph made its debut— and loudly applauded the "views" shown by Bernard and Veyre. The Plateros drugstore was located very close to where, a few years later, one of the first movie theaters in the country would be located: the Salón Rojo.
Mexico was the first country in the American continent to enjoy the new medium, since the cinematographer's entrance to the United States had been blocked by Thomas Alva Edison, although it is rumored that because President Porfirio Díaz, or else his government, had a good friendship with the government of France at that time, the fathers of cinema preferred Mexico to be the first American country to witness this medium. At the beginning of the same year, Thomas Armant and Francis Jenkins had developed in Washington the vitascope, a device similar to the cinematograph. Edison had managed to buy the rights to the vitascope and planned to launch it on the market under the name of Biograph. The arrival of the Lumière invention meant Edison's entry into a competition he had never experienced before.
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Colombia and the Guianas were also visited by envoys from the Lumières between 1896 and 1897. However, Mexico was the only country in the American continent where the French made a series of films that can be considered initiators of the history of a cinematography.
The same year the American vitascope also arrived in Mexico; However, the initial impact of the cinematograph had left Thomas Alva Edison with no opportunity to conquer the Mexican public.
The same year that Bernard and Veyre arrived in Mexico, they filmed The president of the republic riding a horse in the Chapultepec forest and 35 other short films in the capital, Guadalajara and Veracruz. One of the films by the French directors, titled A pistol duel in the Chapultepec forest, caused a stir, since people still did not differentiate reality from fiction. This film could be inspired by the Thomas Alva Edison film titled Pedro Esquirel and Dionecio Gonzales - A Mexican Duel, made three years earlier. In 1897 the first silent tape of Mexican production was made, called Men's Fight in the Zócalo.
The first Mexican filmmakers were the engineer Salvador Toscano (since 1898), Guillermo Becerril (since 1899), the Stahl brothers and the Alva brothers (since 1906) and Enrique Rosas, who in 1906 produced the first Mexican feature film, entitled Presidential festivities in Mérida, a documentary about President Díaz's visits to Yucatán.
In 1898, the aristograph was presented on Calle del Espíritu Santo, a device invented by the Mexican Luis Adrián Lavie that perfected the failed attempts of other inventors to project images in relief. «...inventing some glasses and binoculars that contain inside a mechanism moved by an electric current, in such a way that each time the sight corresponding to one eye is intercepted, that of the other eye. The images follow one another with such rapidity that, due to a persistence effect of the impression on the retina, the views not only appear in relief, but also appear entirely fixed when the telescope is used."
According to the critic and historian of Mexican cinema Emilio García Riera, the emergence of the first Mexican filmmakers was not due to a nationalist feeling, but rather to the primitive nature of cinema at that time: short films, less than a minute of duration, which caused a constant need for new material to exhibit.
When Bernard and Veyre left Mexico, the material they brought from France and the material they filmed in Mexico was bought by Bernardo Aguirre and continued to be exhibited for a while. However, "...the demonstrations of the Lumières around the world ceased in 1897, and from then on they were limited to the sale of devices and copies of the views that their envoys had taken in the countries they had visited." This caused the rapid boredom of the public, who knew the "views" that a few months ago caused a furore.
In 1898, the engineer Salvador Toscano began as a filmmaker, who had dedicated himself to showing films in Veracruz. His work is one of the few that are still preserved from that initial era of cinema. In 1950, his daughter Carmen edited several of Toscano's works in a feature film entitled Memories of a Mexican (1950). Toscano witnessed with his camera various aspects of life in the country during the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution. In fact, he started the documentary aspect that has had so many followers in Mexico.
The silent cinema of Mexico
A pistol duel in the Chapultepec Forest (1896) was filmed by Frenchmen Bernard and Veyre, based on a real event that occurred a short time before between two deputies in the Chapultepec Forest.
Reenactments of famous events were not new in 1896. Edison had made a short tape for his kinetoscope, which may well have inspired the Bernard and Veyre tape. Pedro Esquirel and Dionecio Gonzales - Mexican Duel (1894) featured perhaps the first Mexicans shown on film: two men engaged in a knife duel. This image of the violent Mexican was, since then, the stereotype imposed by American cinema when referring to Mexico.
Salvador Toscano filmed in 1899 a short version of Don Juan Tenorio. This film showed the ambivalence with which fiction was viewed at that time: it was documentary because it recorded the theatrical performance of the play, but it was fiction because it only showed the performance of the actors.
In 1907, the actor Felipe de Jesús Haro made the first ambitious fiction film filmed in Mexico: El grito de Dolores o La independencia de México (1907). Haro himself played the liberator Miguel Hidalgo and wrote the plot. The film was exhibited, almost obligatorily, every September 15 until 1910.
Other fiction films from that period were: El san lunes del valedor o El san lunes del velador (1906), a presumably comic film directed by Manuel Noriega; Adventures of Tip Top in Chapultepec (1907), a short film by the aforementioned Haro; El rosario de Amozoc (1909), the first fiction film by Enrique Rosas; and The anniversary of the death of Enhart's mother-in-law (1912) by the Alva brothers, the oldest fiction film of which copies are still preserved. This film is a comedy performed by the actors Vicente Enhart and Antonio Alegría, comedians from the Teatro Lírico, which shows a marked French influence in its production style.
The Mexican Revolution marked a great hiatus in the making of fiction films in Mexico. With the official end of the conflict, in 1917, this cinematographic aspect seemed to be reborn, in the form of feature films.
In 1917, the main importation of films into Mexico came from Europe. The United States had not yet established itself as a great film production center, although Hollywood was already beginning to emerge as the future Mecca of cinema. In addition, strained relations between Mexico and the United States, along with the stereotypical image of the "Mexican bandit" in many of the American films, it provoked a rejection, both official and popular, towards many of the American films of the time.
France and Italy were the patterns to follow for the "reinauguration" of Mexican fiction cinema in 1917. That year El fuego (Il fuoco, 1915), an Italian film starring Pina Menichelli, an actress who achieved great popularity in Mexico, premiered in Mexico. Mexico and who introduced the concept of "diva" of the cinema, previously only used for theater or opera.
Light, Triptych of Modern Life (1917) is the title of the first "official" of Mexican cinema. The adjective "official" This is because few authors recognize the work of Yucatecan Carlos Martínez de Arredondo and Manuel Cirerol Sansores, who a year earlier filmed 1810 or ¡Los Libertadores de México! (1916) which is probably the first national fiction feature film.
Other famous films from this early golden age were: In Self Defense (1917), The Tigress (1917) and The Dreamer (1917), all produced by the Azteca Films Company. This firm, founded by the actress Mimí Derba and by Enrique Rosas, constituted the first totally Mexican film company. Derba was probably the first female national film director.
The themes that have accompanied Mexican cinematography were also born in the years from 1917 to 1920. Tepeyac (1917), a film that strangely linked the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the sinking of a ship in the twentieth century, was filmed by Fernando Sáyago. Tabaré (1917) by Luis Lezama, whose plot is closely related to films such as Tizoc: Amor indio (1957): the Indian who falls in love with the rich heiress White skin. Finally comes Santa, the prostitute created by the writer Federico Gamboa, who made her first film appearance in the film directed by Luis G. Peredo in 1918, with the actress Elena Sánchez Valenzuela as the protagonist.
Special mention deserves The Gray Automobile (1919), without a doubt the most famous film of the silent era of Mexican cinema. Filmed by Enrique Rosas —with a great cinematographic career if we consider the number of times he has been mentioned in this text—, the film is not really such; is a twelve-episode series that tells the adventures of a famous gang of jewel thieves that became famous in Mexico City around 1915. The film starred María Tereza Montoya, an actress who enjoyed immense popularity and reputation in the Latin American theater.
By 1919, friction with the northern neighbor had eased, and Hollywood cinema began to conquer markets around the world. The decade from 1920 to 1929 witnessed the transformation of the world. World War I had radically altered the values of much of society, and people were trying to forget the horror of up to 1919. In the "Roaring Twenties" Radio, jazz and short skirts were born, as well as fascism, Nazism and the American economic depression.
In 1927 cinema spoke for the first time. The Jazz Singer (1927), by Alan Crossland, became the spearhead of a cinematic novelty: sound. From that moment on, the cinema bet everything on words and music, inaugurating a new era in its history. After 1920, Mexican cinema maintained an uneven race against the growing popularity of Hollywood cinema. The names of Rodolfo Valentino, Tom Mix and Gloria Swanson competed, with great advantage, against those of Carlos Villatoro, Ligia Dy Golconda and Elena Sánchez Valenzuela, for the taste of the Mexican public. In general, very little can be rescued from the Mexican silent cinema of the twenties except for outstanding films such as The Ghost Train (1926) and The Iron Fist (1927), both directed by Gabriel García Moreno the first was action and adventure cinema and the second film that addressed the issue of addictions and drug trafficking. Perhaps the most important thing in that decade for this cinema was the preparation that different Mexican actors, directors and technicians obtained in Hollywood cinema. Mexican actors such as Ramón Novarro, Dolores del Río, Gilbert Roland and Lupe Vélez were listed as great stars in Hollywood in the 1920s.
Among the directors, Fernando de Fuentes, Emilio Fernández, Roberto and Joselito Rodríguez received their film education in Hollywood. In this way, Mexican cinema was preparing for what would be the golden age.
Sound films
In 1929, two films were filmed: God and Law (1929), directed by actor Guillermo Calles and starring Carmen Guerrero, with locations in Tehuantepec and on the beaches of Malibu, California, and Gypsies (1929), a Mexican-American short film acted by Emilio Fernández in Hollywood. In Mexico, director Miguel Contreras Torres films the sound film El águila y el nopal (1929), with the performances of Joaquín Pardavé, Carlos López "Chaflán" and Roberto Soto. Previously, Gustavo Sáenz from Sicilia had already filmed Rosario's Wedding (1929) in December 1928, a silent film released in February 1929 and later re-released with sound on April 27, 1929 at the Teatro Iris, accompanied by phonograph records, with the participation of Cuban actor Juan José Martínez Casado and Mexican actress Consuelo Frank, Ángel E. Álvarez directed the aviation documentary Alas de la gloria (1929), and director Charles Amador directs and produces the short film El inocento (1929), released in 1930, and the feature film Terrible Nightmare (1930), released in 1931, with sound recordings, with the performances of Emilio Tuero and Adela Sequeyro. The silent film director José Manuel Ramos films his first sound short film Cautiva (1929). In 1929, director Luis Lezama filmed Los hijos del destino, released in theaters in 1930 and starring Juan José Martínez Casado. Salvador Pruneda directs Abysms (or Náufragos de la vida) (1930), a film with a Vitaphone sound system. Months later, director Rafael J. Sevilla films Stronger Than Duty (1930), also on the Vitaphone system. Almost all of them fail in their exhibition, due to the inexperience of the technicians in managing the synchronization of sound with images. Miguel Contreras Torres and Roberto Turnbull provide sound, in February 1930, The inauguration of President Engineer Pascual Ortiz Rubio. Similarly, Miguel Contreras Torres directs Soñadores de gloria (1930), a Mexican-American sound co-production, on location in Morocco. The director Gabriel Soria films a series of documentaries in sound short films called Revista Excelsior (1930). We must also take into account the short film Zitari (1931), directed by Miguel Contreras Torres, partially with sound, and the sound film Smuggling (1931), with the actors Virginia Zuri and Ramon Pereda. In 1931, the first successful Mexican sound tape with optical sound was made: a new version of Santa (1931) directed by the Spanish actor Antonio Moreno, performed by Lupita Tovar, with music by Agustín Lara and filmed with the Mexican sound system.
Santa was the first Mexican film that incorporated the technique of direct sound, recorded on a soundtrack parallel to the images on the same film. This technique was created in 1929 by the electronics engineer José de Jesús Rodríguez Ruelas, known as Joselito Rodríguez, who carried out tests with optical sound between 1927 and 1929 and who invented a very light and practical optical sound recording device for cinema.. The invention was baptized with the name of Rodríguez Sound Recording System and revolutionized the embryonic system to obtain the perfect synchrony between the image and the sound in the cinema. It is the third team in the world that achieved optical sound recording for films, with that team they filmed the film with optical sound of their creation Himno Nacional de México (1929) premiered at the Electric cinema in the city of Los Angeles, California on September 15, 1929. He immediately made several sound shorts that earned him recognition in the cinematographic world, but also attracted the envy of both producers and North American sound companies. Among these early formal works are Sangre Mexicana (1930; released in the California theater on May 29, 1931), Fletonatiuh, Santos and Lee I and II (1930), The Famous Band of Music of the Mexican Police (1930) and The Indians are Coming(1930; R: Henry MacRae; produced by Adventure and distributed by Universal Pictures). Among other innovations, it turned out to be the world's first portable computer, only 6 kg (12 lbs) which, compared to the existing 90 kg (200 lbs), average weight, due to its dimensions, seemed to be one more failed attempt. Currently (XXI century), analog sound is recorded under principles similar to those discovered by the engineer Joselito Rodríguez. His invention helped create much of the International Standards for Film Recording.
The support of a Hollywood-trained crew for the filming of Santa (1931) (released in theaters in March 1932) was no accident: it was part of a whole plan to establish a film industry Mexican, which included the founding of the National Film Production Company.
This company acquired existing movie studios from the 1920s and established itself as the nation's largest movie company. The decision to "import" almost the entire crew of the film was made with the idea of ensuring the financial success of the film.
The Mexican intellectual environment was divided between the revolution and socialism. The Russian revolution of 1917 had left as important a mark as the Mexican revolution on the thought of some of the country's intellectuals. Mexico lived the splendor of muralism, an aesthetic movement with a left-wing ideological charge that was never hidden. Literature, music, poetry, photography and painting were arts that had a great development in the thirties. Silvestre Revueltas, Xavier Villaurrutia, Carlos Pellicer, Salvador Novo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo, Juan O'Gorman, María Izquierdo, Tina Modotti, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, among other great artists, they were part of the artistic and intellectual panorama of modern Mexico. A common denominator in the theme of his works was the revision of the Mexican revolution.
In this environment, the trend that Mexican cinema followed once the foundations of the national film industry were established is not surprising. Politics and art pointed to the revolution as their main theme, and that was the path that the new industry followed.
By 1930, the cinematographic contributions of Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin had been recognized worldwide. The Strike (1924), The Battleship Potemkin (1925), The Mother (1926) and October (1927) were already cornerstones in the history of cinematographic art.
Between 1930 and 1932, Eisenstein was in Mexico, accompanied by his assistant and translator, Agustín Aragón Leiva, in order to film a film that would be a vast fresco on the country: ¡Que viva México! (1930-1932). The Soviet filmmaker was sponsored by some left-wing American intellectuals, and he had been in Hollywood where he was unable to make any films, because he had not been able to obtain a residence permit in that country.
Long live Mexico! (1930-1932) could not be completed because Eisenstein's backers withdrew funding and kept the filmed material. However, the images captured by the Soviet director could be appreciated in different films that were made based on them: Storm over Mexico, by Sol Lesser, and Time of the Sun by Mary Seaton, which would be essential for the subsequent style of Mexican cinema.
The visual aesthetic of ¡Que viva México! had a great influence on national cinema. The beautiful landscapes, the photogenic clouds and the exaltation of the indigenous were three outstanding elements of this aesthetic proposal. This style was seen as derived from muralist painting, especially that of Diego Rivera, and greatly influenced a young Mexican who was working in Hollywood and saw the project: Emilio Fernández.
Between the years 1932 and 1936, Mexican talkies consolidated as an industry with films such as El anónimo (1932), Una Vida por otra (1932), El Compadre Mendoza (1933), El Prisionero 13 (1933) with the actor Alfredo del Diestro, La Calandria (1933), The Ghost of the Convent(1934),Let's go with Pancho Villa (1935) and Las Mujeres Mandan(1937), directed by Fernando de Fuentes; An Impertinent Spectator (1932), Mano a Mano (1932), La Mujer del Puerto (1934), Jealousy (1935), Así es mi Tierra (1937) and Águila o Sol (1937)--the last two with Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" all of them directed by Arcady Boytler and Blood Rules (1933), Who Killed Eva?(1934), Love Dream(1935)Luponini of Chicago (also known as The Great Luponini, Luponini or The Bloody Hands (1935) and Marihuana (1936) which addresses the theme of drug trafficking and addictions, directed with the international singer and actor José Bohr.The Spanish director Juan Orol films Dear Mother(1935),Women without a soul, supreme revenge? (1935), You Will Honor Your Parents (1936), The Calvary of a Wife(1936) and Eternal Martyr(1937) with a resounding blockbuster
The Golden Age (1936-1957)
The so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema began in 1936 with the premiere of Allá en el Rancho Grande, and culminated in 1957. However, years before Before this began, Mexican cinema had already reached a high technical and artistic level and had a well-established market, both inside and outside the country, so World War II simply came to increase production and expand the already established market, which does not take away its place as an extremely important element to be able to maintain the level of the Mexican industry in those years.
With the support of the United States after the war, there was an unprecedented boom in national cinema. Large North American film studios jointly supported the development of national cinema, for strategic reasons and to maintain control over Mexico, since it was a time when the communist influence of the Soviet Union hung over the Mexican strategic position and throughout the Latin American hemisphere, which translated into a mass media strategy on the poorly educated and easily influenced Mexican population. Some Mexican films that achieved enormous critical and commercial success were La mujer del puerto (1934), Janitzio (1934) and Dos monjes (1935). Figures like Andrea Palma, Esther Fernández, Lupe Vélez, Tito Guízar and Domingo Soler had already reached the level of myths among Mexican audiences.
Then, the beginning of the Golden Age would come with the premiere of the film Allá en el Rancho Grande, which would inaugurate the ranchera comedy genre, a genre cultivated in Mexico without comparison in the rest of the world, due to the Mexican culture and idiosyncrasy. Internationalization began in 1941 with the film ¡Ay Jalisco, no te rajes! starring Jorge Negrete. And the end will come after the death of the actor and singer Pedro Infante, in 1957.
The significance of Allá en el Rancho Grande is evident in data such as these: "It was the first Mexican film released in English-speaking markets with English subtitles. It was presented on Broadway (New York) at the launch of its national distribution, where it would receive praise from magazines such as Newsweek. This particular triumph sparked new commercial activities for Mexican cinema in the United States, where distribution companies soon established multiple branches: in San Antonio, El Paso and New York and, of course, Los Angeles. There, an executive, quoted in Filmográfico, declared with emotion: “Mexican films are prevailing in foreign markets”. In the United States, Mexican films already earned more than twice what films made in Spanish made in Hollywood".
The rise of Mexican cinema favored the emergence of a new generation of directors. For the public, however, the consolidation of an authentic cadre of national stars who would be the main figures of a star system unprecedented in the history of Spanish-language cinema was more interesting.
In those years, Mexican cinema addressed more themes and genres than at any other time. Literary works, comedy, ranchera comedies, detective films, musical comedies and melodramas were part of the Mexican cinematographic inventory of those years. And also in the final stretch of this period another genre would be inaugurated that could be considered national and that, like the ranchera comedy, had no rivals outside of Mexico: the genre of fights or wrestling movies.
Mexican cinema continued producing works of splendid quality and began to explore other genres such as comedy, romance and musicals. In 1943, the film Flor silvestre brought together a film crew made up of director Emilio Indio Fernández, photographer Gabriel Figueroa, actor Pedro Armendáriz and actress Dolores del Río. The films María Candelaria and La perla are considered masterpieces by Fernández and his team, and they filled Mexican cinema with enormous prestige, touring the world at important film festivals (María Candelaria was awarded the 1946 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Award, the former name of the Palme d'Or, being the first Spanish-language film to obtain it.) For its part, La perla was awarded the Golden Globe by the American film industry, being the first Hispanic film to receive such recognition.
In its golden age, Mexican cinema imitated the Star System that prevailed in Hollywood. In this way, and unlike other film industries, in Mexican cinema the "cult of the actor" began to develop, a situation that led to the emergence of stars that caused a sensation in the public and became authentic idols, much like the American film industry. However, unlike what happened in Hollywood, Mexican film studios never had total power over the big stars, and this allowed them to shine independently and develop in a huge multitude of genres, mainly the figures that emerged in Mexican Cinema in the 1950s, much more versatile and complete than those of the previous decade.
Ranch comedy
The ranchera comedy is a film genre exclusive to Mexico where the action of the film takes place in a ranch, town or locality. In 1936 the film Allá en el Rancho Grande was released, being a box office success. Previously, other films of this genre had been produced, which, however, did not achieve international recognition like the one mentioned.
Thanks to the success achieved, the productions of comedies or tragedies set in typical localities of inland Mexico began. The plot usually takes place in some rural part of Mexico. The protagonists are charros and women in love. The common denominator is usually tequila, love and situations, both comic and tragic. The theme of the Mexican Revolution was recurrent in this genre.
From the genre, films such as El gallo giro (1936), Los tres García (1947) and Two types of care (1952), among many others. However, the formula was squeezed to the point of making very bad and low-budget movies. They are currently considered classics of Mexican cinematography. The ranchero heroes reached a huge poster in the Mexican cinema of the time. Behind Pedro Infante or Jorge Negrete, Luis Aguilar and Antonio Aguilar stand out as top figures.
Musical cinema and rumberas cinema
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Musical cinema in Mexico was strongly influenced by folk music or ranchera music. Stars like Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and Antonio Aguilar made dozens of tapes of the ranchero genre that served as a platform to promote Mexican music. The songs of important composers such as Agustín Lara or José Alfredo Jiménez served as the basis for the arguments of numerous films. The Argentine Libertad Lamarque also stood out for making tapes where music and songs were the main protagonists.
Tropical music, which was fashionable in Mexico and Latin America since the 1930s, was also captured in Mexican cinema. Numerous music revues were made in the forties and fifties. In these productions it was common to see figures ranging from Dámaso Pérez Prado or Toña la Negra to Rita Montaner, María Victoria or Los Panchos. However, musical cinema in Mexico was mostly represented by the so-called Cine de rumberas.
The rumberas cinema was a genre that flourished in the forties and fifties. Its main stars were the so-called "rumberas", dancers of Afro-Antillean musical rhythms. The genre is a filmic curiosity, one of the most fascinating hybrids of world cinematography and finds its roots in various film genres. Today, thanks to its unique characteristics, it is considered within the so-called cult cinema. The Rumberas Cinema represented a social view of the world of the night workers of Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s who confronted the morality and social conventions of their time, and a more realistic approach to the Mexican society of that time. They were melodramas about the lives of these women, who were redeemed through exotic dances. The main figures in this genre were the Cuban María Antonieta Pons, Amalia Aguilar, Ninón Sevilla and Rosa Carmina, as well as the Mexican Meche Beard. The film Aventurera (1950), directed by Alberto Gout, is considered the masterpiece of the genre,
Gangster cinema
Cine noir or gangster cinema (so popular in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s) was represented in Mexico by director Alberto Mendez Bernal in the sound film Contraband (1931) acted by Don Alvarado and Ramón Pereda and trained in theaters in 1933. Subsequently, the actor, singer and director José Bohr filmed the film Luponini de Chicago (1935). The cult director Juan Orol, inspired by this genre and by figures such as Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson, created a film universe and a very particular style by mixing the classic elements of film noir with Mexican folklore, urban and cabaret environments. and tropical music. An example of this, the classic film Gangsters against charros (1948).
Social cinema and urban cinema
With antecedents that go back to the time of The Gray Automobile (1919), a serial that was based on a real case and was even filmed in some of the places where the events narrated and represented on screen, Mexican cinematography has also tried to develop and even consolidate a realistic tradition, the same one that had in Alejandro Galindo the most worthy and significant of its cultivators. Marked by the period in which various realisms reached their classical dimension, Galindo's work —framed in the years 1938-1953— is one of the most significant in Mexican social cinema.
The realistic desires of Mexican cinema were able to reach a new dimension in Campeón sin corona (1945), directed by Galindo. The film was offered as a detailed psycho-sociological study of the historical, racial and cultural conditions that, according to a certain perspective of the time, determined the Mexican lower class. The genre showed life in the poor neighborhoods of the city, reflecting the phenomenon of the growing urbanization of the country. The leading figure in social cinema is actor David Silva, who formed an unforgettable duo with director Alejandro Galindo in films that portrayed urban life in large cities. In addition to the aforementioned Campeón sin corona, Silva and Galindo produced other masterpieces of the genre such as Esquina bajan (1947) and Una familia de tantas (1948). Undoubtedly the most iconic character of this genre was Pepe el Toro, a character played by Pedro Infante in the film Nosotros los pobres (1947) by Ismael Rodríguez, who represented the mirror in which the provincials who arrived in the capital with the hope of finding a more promising future looked at themselves. Luis Buñuel also made filmic portraits of Mexican society in films such as El gran calavera (1948), Illusion travels by tram (1952) and his masterpiece Los olvidados (1950), one of the most scathing portraits of poverty in Mexico. Emilio Fernández also made an important contribution to the genre with Salón México (1949). In addition to Silva and Infante, other stars famous for dabbling in the genre were Blanca Estela Pavón, Lilia Prado, Evita Muñoz "Chachita", Fernando Fernández, Fernando Soto, Freddy Fernández "El Pichi", Meche Barba and Roberto Cobo, among others.
Horror and fantasy films
Horror movies have been a fundamental part of Mexican cinema. Don Juan Tenorio (1898), by engineer Salvador Toscano Barragán, is in fact the first Mexican fiction film, and its well-known plot handles fantastic elements; but with the film La Llorona (1933), by the Cuban Ramón Peón, acted by Ramón Pereda, Virginia Zurí, Adriana Lamar, María Luisa Zea and Carlos Orellana, somehow the horror film genre became started "officially" in Mexico.
Although the 1960s are considered the golden age of horror and science fiction in Mexican cinema, some notable works were found during the golden age. Juan Bustillo Oro deserves a separate mention despite being a filmmaker known for his Porfirian and revolutionary cinema, since at the beginning of his career he promoted the horror genre through scripts and the direction of very important works, such as Two Monks (1934), a masterpiece of the genre and an interesting example of expressionist cinema, The Ghost of the Convent (1934), The Mystery of the Pale Face (1935),El baúl macabre (1936) by Director Miguel Zacarías and Nostradamus (1937). Chano Urueta, a prolific director who began in the silent film era, had already had his approaches to the supernatural in Profanation (1933) and The Sign of Death (1939). However, his greatest contributions would come with The Magnificent Beast (1952), a film in which he introduced fighters to the genre for the first time and The Witch (1954).
For his part, Fernando Méndez, also an outstanding director of the golden age of Mexican cinema although less prolific in terror than Chano Urueta, began his adventures in the genre with Ladrón de cadavers (1956), horror film with wrestlers. Other relevant films of these genres during this period of cinema include; El swamp of souls (1956), Allá en el rancho chico (1938), Devils of the suburbs (1938), and Adventures of Cucuruchito and Pinocchio (1942).
Directors
Among the main filmmakers who contributed to consolidate Mexican Cinema in its Golden Age, the following stand out:
- Miguel Contreras Torres: He was one of the pioneers of Mexican cinema, in which he started working in 1926. The only Mexican director who managed to transition from silent to sound cinema. The complete filmography of Contreras Torres speaks of a man interested in exalting nationalism and patriotism, from the cinema. In essence, there are basically three thematic lines on which his career was built: the history of the homeland, the religious theme and the seamstress. Although it was not the only one, in fact, in the Mexican case, Contreras Torres is the one who has the greatest emphasis on the exaltation of the historical facts of his country. The filmography of Miguel Contreras Torres, in this brief and incomplete review, covered more than 45 years, in which he participated (outside as an actor, producer, editor, director and/or argumentist) in more than 50 films. In addition to its productive activity during the mute period, the 30s and 40s are, quantitatively, the most representative period of this director.
- Fernando de Fuentes: Pionero del cine sonoro and director of three classics of Mexican cinema -The compadre Mendoza (1933), Let's go with Pancho Villa (1936) and There in the Big Rancho (1936)- Fernando de Fuentes is one of the most famous and less understood figures of our cinematography. The comments around his career point to him almost always as an author who decided to stop being an author to become an efficient filmmaker, artificially dividing his filmography into two periods characterized by the presence or absence of aesthetic pretensions. Let's go with Pancho VillaHis masterpiece was misunderstood for several decades. The film was released three months after There in the Big Rancho And he only kept a week in a signpost. Success and failure were presented at the same time and Fernando de Fuentes was very clear that survival was in the formula, in the genres and in the satisfaction of the growing public of Mexican cinema. However, the impressive success There in the Big Rancho (1936) should not be attributed exclusively to the exact combination of songs, loves, puddles and dancers. Behind the film was a director truly endowed with qualities, possessing an excellent technical skill and an extraordinary sense for the visual narrative. Fernando de Fuentes was, in fact, the first Mexican director who understood the nature of sound cinema and who successfully took advantage of all the possibilities of this medium.
- Alejandro Galindo: During the time of gold, the nascent urban Mexico had in Alexander Galindo one of its most faithful film chronists. He has a special talent to recreate the behaviors and popular speech of Mexico City, Galindo was a director capable of creating a universe of his own based on characters and representative situations of modern Mexico. From Champion without crown (1945) Alexander Galindo began the most important stage of his career, in which actor David Silva was a fundamental piece. From the boxers to the taxi drivers, from the bus drivers to the vacuum cleaners sellers, the new Mexican middle class found familiar characters in its surroundings on the screen. A family of so many' (1948) represented the cusp of this stage in which Galindo combined the creative genius with a successful commercial smell.
- Emilio "Indio" Fernández: One of the most important, influential and recognized film directors of this stage in Mexican cinema. Emilio was the creator of a Mexican cinema of a folkloric and indigenist type that contributed to the cultural and artistic discovery that Mexico lived in the 1940s, possessing of an impeccable and unique aesthetic (labeled to a great extent by the help of his head photographer Gabriel Figueroa). Emilio Fernández lega a filmography that adds around works, a number of beautiful images, hundreds of evocations of a Mexico that was planned, its customs and its identity, defended at all costs. A trajectory that was recognized on several occasions with the Ariel Prize, the Gold Colon in Huelva, Spain, and a chair with its name at the Moscow Film School, among many other international awards. Emilio Fernández Romo was not only known for his visceral character, but also for the integration of a filming team that attracted the attention of Hollywood and Europe. With Gabriel Figueroa as a photographer, Mauricio Magdaleno as a writer and with the actors Pedro Armendáriz, Dolores del Río, Columba Domínguez and María Félix, he directed several productions that promoted the national customs and values associated with the Mexican revolution.
- Roberto Gavaldón: Roberto Gavaldón represents one of the most extraordinary cases of ambivalent appreciation that has recorded the history of Mexican cinema. His admirers highlight the refined quality of his images, his impeccable camera handling and his inclination towards dark themes and tormented characters. The same characteristics have been pointed out as flaws by their critics, who consider Gavaldon as an academic, cold and even narcissistic filmmaker, technically correct but lacking authenticity. During the time of gold, Roberto Gavaldón was recognized for his technical and artistic qualities. His custom of repeating the shots until he attained the effect or nuance of performance that he desired brought him fame as obsessive and perfectionist. Dry and authoritarian, Gavaldón imposed a strict code of behavior in the film sets, which is why some technicians and actors referred to him with the descriptive nickname of "El Ogro". However, the antipathies that aroused their character were compensated with admiration and respect for their work. Gavaldon's cinema was synonymous with quality and working with it was considered a true honor.
- Ismael Rodríguez: Uneasy, imaginative, audacious and possessor of an incomparable smell for tachyllero success, Ismael Rodríguez was, indisputably, the filmmaker of the Mexican people. With his brothers (Joselito and Roberto), he founded Films Rodriguez, a long and successful production company. Popular filmmaker par excellence, among his merits is to have taken advantage of the histrionic possibilities of Pedro Infante, an actor to whom he led on sixteen occasions, including the ranch comedy The three Garcia. (1946) and urban melodramas We the poor (1947), You rich (1948) and Pepe El Toro (1952), trilogy that reached the category of myth. In addition to various national and international recognitions, Ismael Rodríguez received in 1992 a golden Ariel for the transcendence of his work.
- Julio Bracho: The common place to quickly and ambiguously define Julio Bracho is to point it out as the most intellectual film director of the “golden era”. While it is not easy to agree with the connotation that you want to give to the word “intellectual” when talking about Julio Bracho, it is possible to accept that it was one of the most important directors of the Mexican Film in the 1940s and 1950s, with several interesting films and some of them worthy of being pointed out among the best of Mexican cinema. Its wide culture and its fine sensitivity give another dimension to the melodrama in cinema.
- Luis Buñuel: The so-called "Father of Cinema Surrealism" made in Mexico most of its extensive filmography, and contributed greatly to the rise of Mexican cinema in the second stage of his Golden Age in the 1950s. The tape The forgotten (1950) achieved an enormous impact on world cinema, to the degree of being considered by UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. One of its latest tapes in Mexico, before moving to Europe, was Spanish-Mexican co-production Viridiana (1961), which was presented at the Festival de Cannes of 1961 as the official representative of Spain and obtained the Palma de Oro. However, after the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemn the tape, to which he slashed with blasphemous and sacrilege, Viridiana could not be officially projected in Spain until 1977. He was the winner of the National Prize for Fine Arts, awarded by the Government of Mexico in 1977.
Mexican cinema from the Golden Age as a banner of nationalism
Mexico became a strong promoter of its own culture, with symbols that are considered part of the nationalist sense, easy to recognize abroad. During the golden age of Mexican cinema, a global connection began to form due to the promotion of these films, due to the interest in learning about a different culture.
The representation of Hispanics themselves in Mexican films caused great fervor among audiences who wanted to identify with them.v They were also very successful because the films produced by Hollywood itself were not to their liking and It came to cause them discontent and discomfort because of the way people outside their region identified them.
Mexican cinema wanted to show the life of a common person in the country, customs and traditions, forms of behavior, values, expected stereotypes will be created, in order to make them feel identified and belonging, just like they were pillars to configure behavior patterns, a single language, traditions, practices, actions, how men and women should be seen and relate to each other, power relations, all this is what was transmitted on the screen, to legitimize a feeling of national identity.
Decay
The first transmissions of Mexican television began in 1950. That year XHTV-Channel 4 began operations. XEWTV-Channel 2 and XHGC-Channel 5, for their part, began transmissions in 1952.
In a few years, television reached enormous power to penetrate the public, especially when the three networks joined to form Telesistema Mexicano, in 1955. By 1956, television antennas were commonplace in Mexican homes, and the new medium was spreading rapidly in the province.
The first images on television, in black and white, appeared on a very small, oval screen, and they were quite imperfect: they did not have the definition and sharpness of the cinematic image. However, not only in Mexico, but throughout the world, cinema immediately suffered from the competition of the new medium. This competition had a decisive influence on the history of cinema, forcing it to seek new paths both in its technique and in the treatment of themes and genres.
The technical news came from Hollywood. Wide screens, three-dimensional cinema, color enhancement, and stereophonic sound were some of the innovations that American cinema introduced in the early 1950s. The high cost of this technology made it difficult for Mexico to produce films with these characteristics, at least for a few years. The "strong" They were another resource used by the cinema to attract the public back to the cinemas. The family nature of the television medium prevented a direct treatment of many of the issues that the cinema -already mature- dared to show. In general, filmmaking became more complex than ever. With an outdated technical infrastructure, little money, a more demanding public, and a market saturated with North American productions, Mexican cinema faced its decline.
On April 15, 1957, the entire country was shaken by the news of the death of Pedro Infante. With him, symbolically, the golden age of national cinema also died. Little or nothing remained of those years of splendor.
Mexican cinema experienced an almost complete inertia at the end of the fifties. The traditional formulas had already exhausted their capacity for entertainment; ranchera comedies, melodramas and rumberas films were filmed and shown to an increasingly indifferent public. Even Emilio Fernández, the most important director of the time, began to repeat his films with other actors but with the same themes.
The cinema of Luis Buñuel, the films of fighters and the birth of independent cinema, were the only novelties within this exhausted industry. At the end of the fifties, the crisis of Mexican cinema was not only noticeable to those who knew its economic problems: the very tone of a tired, routine and vulgar cinema, lacking in inventiveness and imagination, evidenced the end of an era (García Riera, 1986:221).
The world was changing and with it the cinema made in other countries. The removal of censorship in the United States allowed for a bolder and more realistic treatment of many issues. In France, a young generation of filmmakers educated in film criticism was starting the New Wave movement. In Italy, neorealism had affirmed the career of several filmmakers. Swedish cinema made its appearance with Ingmar Bergman, at the same time that Akira Kurosawa emerged in Japan.
Mexican cinema, for its part, had stagnated due to bureaucratic and union problems. Production was concentrated in a few hands, and the possibility of seeing new filmmakers emerge was almost impossible, due to the difficulties imposed by the directors' section of the Film Production Workers Union (STPC). Three of the most important film studios disappeared between 1957 and 1958: Estudios Tepeyac, Clasa Films and Estudios Azteca.
Also in 1958, the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences decided to discontinue the practice of awarding the Ariel Award to the best of national cinema. The Ariel had been instituted in 1946, and its cancellation underlined the state of crisis in the industry.
By making cinema a matter of national interest, the Mexican government was unknowingly digging the grave of this industry. In 1960, when the government of Adolfo López Mateos acquired the theaters of Operadora de Teatros and Cadena de Oro - thus disrupting Jenkins' monopoly - the final stage of film production came under state control.
Transition period
Film of fighters
At that time, Mexican wrestling was very popular. In 1952, the film The Magnificent Beast, by Chano Urueta, was made, the first wrestling film. Mexican wrestling, the rude against the technicians, the blows, the blood, the theatrical, the spectacle, the screams, the falls, the counting, the flattery, the insults, the coexistence, the masks, the hair, Mexican folklore represented in a cinema that not only talked about the fights in the ring, but also showed the public another life of the fighters, their walk on the street, families, love dramas, their friendly side and fights outside the ring, just like in the year 1954 La sombra vengadora, by Rafael Baledón, shows it by contributing elements for what will become a genre of cinema typical of Mexico. Powerful villains are now shown as antagonists and the hero role is given to the fighter. A key year to take this cinema to the top is 1958, when one of the most representative characters of Mexican culture makes his debut, the most popular of the wrestlers, the myth and a legend: El Santo. Although in 1952 El Santo was already a popular character in the world of wrestling, in the Arena México and in the fantastic of comics, the movie El Enmascarado de Plata was starred by El Médico Asesino, another famous wrestler of the time, and it was not until 1958, in Santo contra el cerebro del mal , by Joselito Rodríguez and filmed in Cuba, that the legend began to come to life. Despite the low budget, the stories set the tone for what will be done in later years, to present the masked hero and give his mask great significance. The Saint reached the top with the famous Saint Against the Vampire Women (1962), by Alfonso Corona Blake. Not only El Santo appeared in the cinema of fighters. In 1964 another icon of Mexican wrestling also appeared: Blue Demon, reaching incredible acceptance to the point of fighting in 1969 against the silver masked man, in the movie Santo vs Blue Demon in Atlantis. Mil Máscaras, Tinieblas, Rayo de Jalisco and various wrestlers will join the appearances on the screen, in a cinema of wrestlers that little by little eroded until it became obscure at the beginning of the 1980s.
Rock and roll cinema
This cinema arose at a time when Mexican cinema was declining due to lack of support and the mafias of the union that only allowed the same directors to promote films as always. It was born with the hope of attracting a young public that, due to the influence of the American cliché, holds the Mexican adolescent culture in its hands. This new type of cinema is based on three characteristics or origins: social, economic and sexual. The first is because of the different topics that the life of an adolescent can share in terms of the movement of a fresh and hungry society for savagery, such as crime that is increasing remarkably at that time in the country. The second is due to the need to compete in any field imposed by American cinema. In addition, young people contributed most of the money to the cinema, which led to the demand for a mirror between viewers and the screen to find more than entertainment in the theater, but rather a personal and social identification. Finally, Mexican cinema was already beginning to forgive the censorship of the female nude by projecting it as "artistic nudes." This, in turn, serves as a hook for adolescents who are at the age of sexual awakening.
Another phenomenon that Mexican cinema could not escape was rock and roll. Actress and dancer Gloria Rios introduces rock and roll to Mexican cinema through films like "Unbridled Youth" (José Díaz Morales, 1956) "The madness of rock and roll " (Fernando Méndez 1957) and "Unforgettable Melodies" (Jaime Salvador, 1959) in Eastmancolor. As they did in the Saxon countries, the producers decided to invest in the rising figures of music to make musical films, and thereby promote the rise of people like Enrique Guzmán, Angélica María, César Costa, Alberto Vázquez, Los Hermanos Carrión, Julissa, among others. Their fame led them to promote their songs in the movies, with simple stories but the youth of that time made them a box office success.
Independent cinema
In the early 1960s, a new generation of Mexican film critics began to publicly note the need to renew the practices of a dying industry. Unlike other times, the critics of the sixties did not feel compelled to defend Mexican cinema out of simple nationalism. What was done in Europe and other latitudes placed Mexican cinema in a very disadvantageous place. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) began in the sixties an important movement in favor of quality cinema. The UNAM was a pioneer in the creation of film clubs in Mexico and in 1963 founded the University Center for Cinematographic Studies (CUEC), the first official film school in Mexico. Within this panorama, an important current of independent cinema emerged in Mexico. The filming of En el balcón vacío (1961) encouraged the celebration, in 1965, of the First Feature Film Experimental Film Contest, convened by the film industry. From this contest and from the second, held in 1967, directors such as Alberto Isaac, Juan Ibáñez, Carlos Enrique Taboada and Sergio Véjar emerged, who would develop an important part of their career in the seventies and eighties.
A factor worth highlighting in this current of changes experienced by Mexican cinema is the presence of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who began his famous film career in the country.
- Alejandro Jodorowsky: Among his many facets are those of writer (novelist, playwright, poet and essayist), theatrical and film director, screenwriter, actor, mimo, puppeteer, composer of soundtracks, sculptor, painter in cinema, historietist, cartoonist, instructor of the tarot and psychomagic healer. His cinema draws special attention to being shocking, transgressive, overloaded, strange, with esoteric elements and an atmosphere full of symbolism and surrealism. Many times tilded of inprehensible, Jodorowsky's films have a place in the so-called cult cinema, for some and others, in the charlatanry and the cliché cinema (it is often sanctioned by criticism in this and other areas, almost always because of its lacking statements of base in terms of psychoanalysis and philosophy). In 1967 he rolls with his first film, Fando and Lis, adaptation of the homonymous work of Fernando Arrabal. The film was projected at the Acapulco festival in Mexico and Jodorowsky had to flee to avoid being lynched. His second film, The moleIt was released in 1970. With this film Jodorowsky gained international recognition. His third film The sacred mountain, it's the only fiction film based on personality eneagram. In Mexico, it also produced Pubertinage (1971) and Apollinate (1972). His fourth and last feature film in Mexico was Holy blood (1989).
The new wave of Mexican cinema and state cinema
Upon assuming the presidency in 1970, Luis Echeverría Álvarez faced a country completely transformed in terms of its growth expectations. An important feature of Echeverría's politics was the importance given to the mass media. For the first time in Mexican political history, the government systematically used cinema, radio, and television as formal channels of national and international communication. In 1972, through the state-owned company Somex, the Mexican government acquired television channel 13. The radio was also used by the government, through the purchase of various radio stations. The cinema experienced a virtual nationalization, something unique in a non-socialist country. The nationalization of cinema was the result of a chain of circumstances. The Banco Nacional Cinematográfico, founded in 1942, received an investment of one billion pesos in order to modernize the technical and administrative apparatus of the national cinema. This gave way, in 1975, to the creation of three state-owned film production companies: Conacine, Conacite I and Conacite II.
Other actions of the Echeverría government, aimed at improving film production, were: the reconstitution of the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences and the delivery of the Ariel, in 1972; the inauguration of the Cineteca Nacional, in 1974, and the creation of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), in 1975. The Mexican cinema produced from 1970 to 1976 is considered, by many scholars of Mexican cinematography, as one of the best that have been made in that country. During this period a new wave of avant-garde young filmmakers emerged:
- Carlos Enrique Taboada: Although during his career after the cameras he addressed different themes and genres, Carlos Enrique Taboada has gone to the history of Mexican cinema as one of the best representatives of the very scarce national horror cinema. The popularity achieved by their horror films is indisputable. Neither Taboada himself, nor his other thirteen films, of other genres have achieved a similar recognition to that of his tetralogy of Gothic horror: Even the wind is afraid (1968), The Book of Stone (1968), Blacker than the night (1974) and Poison for fairies (1984). Although he was conceived as a director of actors, Taboada's films show his extraordinary skill for purely film narrative. Much of the success achieved by its horror tapes is due more to the virtues of the director to develop disturbing atmospheres than to the interpretation of its actors. In this sense, Taboada and Fernando Méndez have been the only Mexican directors who understood the importance of subtlety in horror.
- Luis Alcoriza: He collaborated with Luis Buñuel, in eight of his scripts. Great friends, Alcoriza did not see valued his work as the Cambodian, which always weighed him, even more when he was considered his "disciple", something he always denied tajontly claiming that "Buñuel never gave him classes." Alcoriza insisted that similarities could be given by common cultural sources, but never from an imitation or a teacher-alumn relationship. However, thanks to the specialized criticism, today several titles of Alcoriza's work have been revalued, highlighting works as Tlayucan (1962), Tiburoneros (1963), Tarahumara (1965), Paradise (1970), National mechanics (1971), Presagio (1974) and The living forces (1975).
- Arturo Ripstein: Ripstein's early debut was an extraordinary situation for the time, considering that the rigid trade union structure of the Mexican film industry kept its doors shut to new directors. Two factors were combined to facilitate, indirectly, the arrival of Ripstein to the cinema: on the one hand, the creation of the University Centre for Film Studies (CUEC), the first film school in Latin America; on the other, the organization of the experimental film competitions by the Engineering and Manuals Section of the Union of Film Production Workers (STPC) in 1965 and 1967. His formal income to the industry occurred three years later. During the 1970s, Ripstein consolidated himself as director and began one of the most fruitful stages of his career, which includes three of the most important films of contemporary Mexican cinema: The castle of purity (1972), The place without limits (1977) and Life imprisonment (1978). The latter two managed to place it in the select group of young Mexican filmmakers whose filmography began to be studied with care by national and foreign specialists. After a brief period characterized by unlucky productions, Ripstein found in 1985 the writer Paz Alicia Garciadiego, who became her most effective mancuerna. The binomial Ripstein-Garciadiego undertook a direct journey towards the definitive internationalization of the ripstein film. Spain and France paid tribute through exhibitions, exhibitions and awards, and his name began to be repeatedly mentioned together with the title "the best Mexican director of our time".
- Jaime Humberto Hermosillo: With the passing of time, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo's films have become a must for the analysis of the social behavior of the contemporary Mexican and the portrait that the cinema has made of it. Born in a conservative environment, Hermosillo has built a solid filmography whose common denominator is its interest - almost surgical- to spread the Mexican classmedary hypocrisy and "open the curtain" behind which many perversities are hidden. His professional career began with private production comedy The true vocation of Magdalena (1971). The cinematic crisis of the 1980s forced Hermosillo to take refuge in independent cinema and settle in Guadalajara. This stage of your filmography has as a highlight Herlinda and her son (1984), the most openly gay comedy of Mexican cinema. The success of this film outside of Mexico assured Hermosillo the honor of being one of the few Mexican directors whose films have been acquired by foreign distributors and marketed in video and DVD.
- Jorge Fons: In 1966, the UNAM University Centre for Film Studies (CUEC) came to its first generation. Those young people formed the first contingent of Mexican filmmakers who had conducted formal film studies in Mexico. Among them was Jorge Fons, an uneasy Veracruzian with many ideas and a desire to film. His short film domain was evident when he led the third episode Faith, Hope and Charity (1972) which earned him the nomination - unprecedented in the history of the Ariel Awards of the Mexican Academy of Cinema Sciences and Arts- within the categories of best film (only this episode) and best director. Of all his filmography, it should be noted The masonsbased on the novel by Vicente Leñero; Red dawn (1989), first tape to refer directly to the events of 1968. The story of this film and its consequences is already well known and there is no need to review it again. It is enough to say that with her Fons opened the door to a new generation of young filmmakers who, like himself two decades ago, fought to join an industry that urgently needed them. And finally it stands out The alley of miracles (1995), the latter based on the homonym book of Naguib Mahfuz, of 1947 (زق المدق), which breaks with the classic linear narrative schemes in cinema.
- Felipe Cazals: Director, screenwriter and producer of Mexican cinema, several times awarded the Ariel Prize. In 1970 she presented her first opera Emiliano Zapata, and in the middle of the seventies he filmed three of the most important films of Mexican cinematography: Canoa (1975, which received the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival), The power out (1976) and The Poquianchis (1976). He was also the winner of the Silver Concha to the best director in the 1985 edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, by The motives of Light (1985).
File films and the Mexican erotic comedy
In Mexico, from the beginnings of talkies until the 1970s, the filming and subsequent distribution of a series of drama and horror films was allowed, in which the actresses appeared at certain moments in the partial stories (toples) or totally nude, among which it is worth mentioning as the most controversial the Mexican ones La mujer del puerto (Arcady Boytler, 1934), El rosal bendito (written and directed by Juan Bustillo Gold in 1936), The Blood Stain (Adolfo Best Maugard, 1937), La Zandunga (Fernando de Fuentes, 1938), The Force of Desire (Miguel M. Delgado, 1955) played by actress Ana Luisa Peluffo, Saint in Dracula's Treasure (René Cardona, 1968), whose uncensored version was distributed in Europe under the title The Vampire and Sex and Satanic Pandemonium or The Sexorcist, released later in Italy under the title La Novizia Indemoniata (Gilberto Martínez Solares, 1975). However, a six-year term was enough for the state-supported film industry to collapse, given the inertia and indifference of the new officials in charge of continuing with film work. In 1976, President José López Portillo appointed his sister Margarita de él as Director of Radio, Television and Cinematography (RTC). Her work at the forefront of the fate of the media in Mexico was completely disastrous. With the idea of "promoting a return to family cinema" and "return to the golden age", the López Portillo administration dismantled the structures of the state film industry created a six-year term earlier. They tried to internationalize Mexican cinema by bringing foreign directors to film in Mexico. Support was stopped for directors who had produced successful films in the previous six-year term. In the end, the official budget for Mexican cinema disappeared in the sea of foreign debt. Meanwhile, taking advantage of a favorable change in exhibition policies, a new private film industry emerged, which in a few years took over the Mexican market. This industry - characterized by producing low-cost films, in a very short time and with zero quality - prospered and grew rich throughout the eighties. File movies and Mexican erotic comedy were genres that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s.
The name ficheras cinema was coined as a result of the title of the first of these films, called Bellas de noche (Las ficheras), from 1975. Unlike their predecessors, the rumberas, these new "ladies of the night" they took advantage of the facilities granted by the film authorities to lavish nudity and swear words.
For its part, the Mexican erotic comedy is recognized as a set of cinematographic works with a relatively low budget and not necessarily of great quality, with a sexual and mischievous tone, although not particularly explicit, and due to the use of double-meaning language, known in Mexico as the albur. Possibly this genre is based on the Italian erotic comedy. It was enormously successful at the box office, although it is considered a low-quality period of Mexican cinematography.
The "kid western"
The cinema produced on the border between Mexico and the United States -popularly known as "kid western"- was an interesting manifestation of the paths followed by private production during the eighties. This genre quickly became popular in the northern part of Mexico and found its most loyal audience among immigrants of Mexican origin living in the United States. Thanks to the ability of its creators to use the typical conventions of the American western -hence the nickname- and transfer them to the contemporary environment of contraband, braceros and drug traffickers, the "kid western" it became the last of the great genres of Mexican cinema. Border cinema also developed thanks to the accelerated development of a border culture, a mixture of Mexican and North American realities. The stories sung in the popular "corridos norteños" they were soon represented on the screen. For the first time in many years, a major film production took place outside the limits of Mexico City.
Regardless of its scarce artistic values or the poor quality of most of its productions, border cinema was a manifestation of great cultural importance. His films reflected the harsh reality that an important sector of the Mexican population lived -and still lives-. Films such as Smuggling and Betrayal (1976), Famous Gunmen (1980) or Lola la trailera (1983), demonstrated the enormous capacity for convocation of a cinema that, despite the precarious conditions of its production, distribution and exhibition, managed to get the public to fill the rooms where it was shown.
Television cinema
At the beginning of the 1980s, Televicine emerged, a subsidiary of the powerful television station Televisa. Televicine's first film was El Chanfle (1981). The film was a great success, and somehow signaled the type of cinema that the television emporium film company would try to produce: films shot in a short time, with limited resources, little imagination, easy popular consumption that would seek to take advantage of the fame of the "stars" television stations to attract the general public. Like all television productions by the company, the cinematography does not have the slightest cultural value either; without exception, these are commercial products that are easy to consume and quickly disposable. With this formula, Televicine obtained two box-office successes, some of them very significant, such as the series La risa en vacaciones, the films by India María and the tapes that had show business figures in their cast. Attracted by the lure of the so-called quality cinema promoted by Imcine (see the section "El Nuevo Cine Mexicano" below), in 1994 the Televisa film company decided to venture into the fields of quality. However, Televicine's venture into quality cinema did not last long. It was very significant, because it happened in the years 1994 and 1995, when Imcine handed over the quality film production baton to this Televisa affiliate. The Televicine case occurred precisely during the period of the presidential replacement, in a year sown by agitated events in the country and society.
Biblical and religious cinema
- Tepeyac (The Miracle of Tepeyac) (1917) directed by Fernando Sáyago.
- Mary Magdala: Singer of Magdala (1945) directed by Miguel Contreras Torres.
- Queen of Queens: The Virgin Mary (1948) directed by Miguel Contreras Torres.
- Nazareth (1959) directed by Luis Buñuel.
- The last king (2007) inspired by the poems of San Juan de la Cruz and directed by Eduardo Barraza.
- Cristiada (2012) directed by Dean Wright.
Mexican cinema of economic opening
Upon assuming the presidency of Mexico in 1982, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado inherited a country mired in the deepest of economic and social crises. The Mexican government almost completely forgot about the cinema, an unimportant industry in times of crisis. If Mexican film production did not become extinct in those years, it was due to the rise of private production -plagued with ficheros and comedic albureros- and due to the few independent productions, which found in the cooperative system the way to produce few samples of films of quality. From 1982 to 1988, virtually all Ariel-winning films were viewed exclusively by Academy jury members. Few exceptions -such as Frida, naturaleza viva (1983) by Paul Leduc, or Los motivos de Luz (1985) by Felipe Cazals- managed to be shown in commercial cinemas. The exhibition of Mexican cinema became another serious problem. On the one hand, the law that forced exhibitors to allocate fifty percent of screen time to national films was never fully complied with. On the other hand, the poor quality of Mexican films and the public's lack of interest in seeing them caused the few quality film samples to be shown in third-category theaters.
In 1983, the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (Imcine) was created, a public entity in charge of guiding Mexican cinema along the path of quality. The Imcine was subordinated to the General Directorate of Radio, Television and Cinematography (RTC) of the Ministry of the Interior until 1989, when it became coordinated by the new National Council for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta, since 2015 Ministry of Culture)..
At the beginning of August 1992, the entertainment press of the capital announced that Como agua para chocolate (1992), by Alfonso Arau, had set a record of permanence in the Latino Cinema of Mexico City, a room generally dedicated to showing American films. At the same time, the Monterrey press announced that this same film was the highest grossing of that year in Monterrey.
For the Mexican public of the nineties, titles such as La tarea (1990), by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo; Danzón (1991), by María Novaro; Only with your partner (1991), by Alfonso Cuarón; Cronos (1992), by Guillermo del Toro, or Miroslava (1993), by Alejandro Pelayo, had a high-quality meaning, very different from that attributed to cinema Mexican a few years earlier. The new Mexican films made the cinema once again form an active part of the culture of Mexico. In general, Mexican cinema experienced a happy reunion with its audience. Attendance at movie theaters to see Mexican films increased considerably between 1990 and 1992. The rental of these same films on video exceeded distributors' expectations.
The 1990s bear witness to two factors that marked Mexican cinema: the disappearance of the Compañía Operadora de Teatros (COTSA) and Películas Nacionales, both government agencies that subsidized the exhibition and distribution of Mexican cinema in the country, and the so-called "New Mexican Cinema", which propped up "quality cinema".
The re-release of films that had been banned in the past was also promoted, such as La sombra del caudillo. Salma Hayek, who made her television debut, began to emerge as a new national star and Hollywood diva.
In the following years, Mexican cinema gradually recovered, if not strength, then the prestige it enjoyed in the so-called Golden Age. The work of some filmmakers of this new era is worth taking into account:
- Alfonso Cuarón: Winner in 2014 and 2019 of the Academy Award as Best Director. He's Carlos Cuarón's brother. He is considered one of the most promising Mexican filmmakers of his generation and of international significance in recent years. Horn began directing an independent film in his home country (Only with your partner, 1991) but international recognition came with American productions as The princess (1995) and its feature film, And your mom too. (2001). He then directed projects of large budgets and well received by criticism as Harry Potter and Azkaban Prisoner (2005), Children of Men (2006) and Gravity (2013), a film with which the Oscar won the best director, which made him the first Latin American director to get the award; he also won the Oscar at the best assembly. His son and brother (Jonás and Carlos Cuarón respectively), are writers and directors. Both have acted as co-writers in some of their works. Rome (2018 film) earned him the first Oscar for Mexico in the foreign film category, also won the Oscar for best director and best photograph. He also won the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA Award for Best Director. Rome won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for better foreign film and two BAFTAs for better photography and better film.
- Guillermo del Toro: Director, screenwriter, producer and Mexican novelist, awarded the Goya Prize and several times with the Ariel Prize. Del Toro started filming in Mexico from a teenager, when he was at the Institute of Science, in the city of Guadalajara. He spent ten years in makeup design and formed his own company, Necropia, before he could be the executive producer of his first film at age 21. He was co-founder of the Guadalajara Film Festival and created the production company Tequila Gang. Guillermo del Toro is a filmmaker who has directed a wide variety of films, from comic adaptations (such as Hellboy and Blade II...even horror films and historical fantasy. These movies, The Pencil of the Devil (2001) and The Labyrinth of Fauna (2006), they also share similar aspects: protagonists (small children) and thematic (such as the relationship between terror and fantasy and living under the yoke of a fascist or dictatorial regime). Del Toro is characterised by printing a spectacular aesthetic and setting to his films, creating tetrical and depleting environments or magical and fantastic situations. Its style is marked by its taste for biology and symbolist art school, its fascination with the fantastic world from the standpoint of fairytales and its taste for dark themes. His works often include monsters or fantastic beings. Del Toro has always claimed to be in love with monsters.
Alejandro González Iñárritu, in 2014.
- Alejandro González Iñárritu: Cineasta, screenwriter, producer and Mexican composer, winner of four Oscar Awards. He is considered one of the best filmmakers today. Gonzalez Iñárritu is the first Mexican filmmaker to get the Oscar Award to the Best Director and the Directors' Union Award (DGA). It is also the first to direct a winning film of the Best Film Award awarded annually by the Academy of Arts and Cinema Sciences. In addition, he received the award to the best director at the Cannes Festival (2006), for his work on the Babel tape. His six feature films, Love dogs (2000) 21 grams (2003) Babel (2006), Biutiful (2010) Birdman (2014) and The reborn (2015) have been acclaimed by global criticism, all of them have received awards at international festivals and Oscar nominations in different categories. Iñárritu has won in total throughout his career four Golden Globes, three BAFTA awards and an award to the best director of the Cannes festival. In 2015 he won three Oscar prizes for his film Birdman: award to the best director, best original script and best movie. In 2016 he won an Oscar prize for his film The reborn: the best director, being so, the first Mexican and the third filmmaker to win two Oscar Awards consecutively, in the category of best director in the last 60 years.
- Amat Escalante (February 28, 1979): Mexican director, producer and screenwriter winner of the Best Director Award at the Festival de Cannes 2013 for his work in Heli and winner of the Silver Lion at the best address of the Venice International Film Festival for the film The Wild Region (2016) Son of Mexican father and American mother, was born in Barcelona, Spain, during the time his parents lived in Europe. He spent his childhood and youth in Guanajuato, Mexico; in 2001, he travelled to Spain to study editing and sound at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficas de Cataluña. After his stay in Barcelona, Escalante joined the International Film and TV School in Cuba. On his return to Mexico he directed the short film Amarrados (2002), for which he received a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003. Later I work as assistant to Carlos Reygadas on the tape Battle in Heaven (2005) and became friends in the process, being co-productive king of the first projects of Escalante (Blood2005). Its style is usually characterized by being a crude and realistic representation of modern Mexican society; coming to generate controversy and controversy among critics for the strong explicit content of its work.
Festivals
In the country you can enjoy a wide range of festivals and film shows since around 45 of them are carried out throughout the year in different states of the republic; some of international stature, others independent, some dedicated specifically to some areas of cinema, to genres, as well as some others dedicated to certain sectors of society, all with the quality that good cinema offers.
Among the festivals dedicated to sectors of society in particular are film festivals for children and young people: Divercine and the International Children's Film Festival.
The spaces with a look towards specific areas of cinema; the documentary area Ambulante tour of documentaries and the International Documentary Film Festival of Mexico City, "DocsDF" that shows the films throughout the year.
They are also divided by genre, as is the case of the International Festival of Fantastic and Horror Films: Mórbido Film Fest.
Throughout the Mexican Republic, different and important festivals take place, such as the Morelia International Film Festival in the state of Michoacán, the famous Guadalajara International Film Festival in Jalisco, the International Film Festival Cinema of Hermosillo in the north of the country. The country's border area is no exception as it presents the "Los Cabos International Film Festival" year after year.
The University of Guadalajara has organized the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG) since 1985, in which the Mayahuel prize is awarded. This festival screens a selection of national and international feature films and short films. It takes place in the month of March and summons the main personalities of national cinema.
Movie theaters
To 2016
In Mexico, there are (according to a journalistic note that appeared in the Mexican newspaper El Economista on February 9, 2016), a total of 6,011 movie theaters, of which 2,541 are owned by Cinemex (42.3 percent of the market), 3,037 belong to Cinépolis (50.5 percent of the market) and 433 are independent (Cinemagic, Henry Cinemas and Citicinemas, among others, which together represent 4.1 percent of the market).
According to the National Chamber of the Film Industry of this country (Canacine), Mexico ranks fourth in the world, according to the number of tickets sold, and tenth, according to income in the world. In 2015, cinema attendance per inhabitant 16 percent (2.5 times). The total Mexican box office grew 14.8 percent in one year, compared to 6 percent growth for the international box office. In 2015, 85 of the 140 films produced were shown on commercial billboards, according to Imcine. However, only three Mexican films obtained more than 100 million pesos. Of the films released in Mexico, 85 (18.5 percent) were Mexican, 192 were American, and 182 were from other countries. In 2015, Imcine supported 140 films (documentaries, animations and fiction) with a total budget of 750 million Mexican pesos, through the Fund for Quality Cinematographic Production (Foprocine), the Investment Fund and Cinema Incentives (Fidecine) and the Eficine. A constant problem in the exhibition of Mexican films is the fact that most of them do not remain on the commercial billboard for more than two weeks, due to which they obtain little income and the recovery of the investment of the State in the cinema is little. According to Canacine, only six Mexican films were released in the United States and reached a total of 19.4 million Mexican pesos. Only at the level of international awards has Mexican cinema had a very good performance: in 2015, it obtained almost one hundred statuettes or mentions internationally, and 115 nationally....
History of rooms
The first audiovisual projection in Mexico took place on August 6, 1896, at Chapultepec Castle; Porfirio Díaz and his family attended. Days later, on August 14, the press and a group of scientists witnessed these projections in the basement of the "Plateros" (in the street that would later be called Madero). On August 15, it was presented to the general public. However, the first proper movie theater in Mexico City was El Salón Rojo, where the first images were shown, also during the Porfirian era and exclusively for members of the aristocracy. The article "Antiguos cines capitalinos", authored by the editorial staff of the Mexican magazine Algarabía (published on January 5, 2014) offers a list of some of the movie theaters best known in Mexico City.
National Day of Mexican Cinema
On August 15, 2017, it began to be celebrated in Mexico, according to what was published by the Senate of the Republic on April 22 of that same year, the National Day of Mexican Cinema, with a marathon showing free films of all genres and themes in the theaters of some cities of the country. The Cineteca Nacional was the main venue, and activities included an exhibition on Mexican cinema and the issuance of a series of commemorative lottery tickets, as well as the screening of a restored copy of El rincón de las vírgenes (1972), inspired by the stories of Juan Rulfo. Some films of the program that date were:
In Mexico City
- Güeros (2015), by Alonso Ruizpalacios;
- I don't want to sleep alone.Natalia Beristáin;
- I promise you anarchy (2015), by Julio Hernández Cordón;
- The gold cage (2013), by Diego Quemada-Díez;
- the documentary Breakdownby Roberto Fiesco;
- the documentary Australian yachtsEverardo González;
- the documentary Seasonof Tatiana Huezo;
- The unusual catfishClaudia Saint-Luce;
- The hours with youCatalina Aguilar Mastretta.
In Zacatecas
- Workersof José Luis Valle;
- The smallest place, by Tatiana Huezo (first woman in the history of the Ariel Awards that receives the presea to the Best Direction);
- 600 milesGabriel Ripstein.
At the Tijuana Cinematheque
- The awardPaula Markovitch.
- Heliby Amat Escalante (premio at the Festival de Cannes);
- The naked roomNuria Ibáñez.
At the Cineteca Nuevo León
- the documentary The revolution of the robbersLuciana Kaplan;
- Post Tenebras Luxof Carlos Reygadas;
- Tropical carmineRigoberto Pernéno.
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