08 · 08 · 16

FICM to present a retrospective of Julio Bracho’s films

Julio Bracho is one of the most representative directors of Mexican cinema, with a career that spans more than 30 years, his films have become a benchmark for the cinema made in Mexico from the 1940’s to the late 1970’s.

As part of the 14th edition of FICM, thanks to the invaluable support of the Filmoteca de la UNAM, the Cineteca Nacional, Fundación Televisa and the Sindicato de Trabajadores Técnicos y Manuales de la Producción Cinematográfica (STYM), the festival will present a seven film retrospective in honor of Julio Bracho, composed of the following titles:

• ¡Ay, qué tiempos señor don Simón! (1941)
• Historia de un gran amor (1942)
• Distinto amanecer / Another Dawn (1943)
• La corte de Faraón (1944)
• Crepúsculo / Twilight (1945)
• Rosenda (1948)
• La sombra del caudillo (1960)

Julio Bracho was born in Durango, Durango, on July 17, 1909. His interest for the arts began as a young man, and he soon became known in the cultural sphere as a theater director. After a vast and valuable season in theater, in 1941 he directed his first feature film, the comedy ¡Ay qué tiempos, señor don Simón!, a box-office success which broke the record by making more than 137 thousand pesos of the time.

Thanks to his first film’s success, he directed Historia de un gran amor (1942), a cinematographic adaptation of the novel El niño de la bola, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. He then made, with the production company Films Mundiales, La Virgen que forjó una patria (1942), Distinto amanecer / Another Dawn (1943) and La corte de Faraón (1944). According to Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, Distinto amanecer is a peak work which defines Bracho as an authentic filmmaker: “It is, by far, the complete work of an ‘auteur’ in the way it faithfully reflects the urban middle class lifestyle which Bracho represents; the film has transcended over time precisely because it portrays the urban mindset of a social sector that, until then, had only been marginally seen in Mexican cinema.”

In his next film, Crepúsculo / Twilight (1945), Bracho consolidated his style and positioned himself as one of the most representative directors of the so called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. However, it was with Rosenda (1948) that he reached one of the highest points of his career. Based on an homonymous text by the Michoacán-born writer José Rubén Romero, and produced by Salvador Elizondo, the film highlights Bracho’s dexterity and maturity as a director; De la Vega Alfaro points out: “The transcendence of Rosenda lies in its role as a formal field for experimentation by an ambitious and learned filmmaker, far beyond the ups and downs of the traditionalist and romantic story it was based on.”

The period from 1949 to 1959, during the decadence of Mexican cinema’s Golden Age, Bracho directed more than 20 melodramas, most of them conventional and removed from his personal interests. However, in 1960 he received an opportunity he had been waiting for a long time: to make the big screen adaptation of La sombra del caudillo, homonymous novel by Martín Luis Guzmán. The political context in Mexico impeded the film from being shown in national movie theaters. Still waiting the premiere of his film, Bracho made 12 more feature films and died on April 26, 1978, in Mexico City. After a prolonged censure of 30 years, La sombra del caudillo was finally shown in Mexico in 1990.

During the 14th FICM there will also be a photographic exhibition titled “Julio Bracho, el misterio de la luz crepuscular” with images from the Fundación Televisa archive. The exhibit will be open to the public starting on October 21 and until November 18, 2016, at the Plaza Benito Juárez in Morelia.

For FICM, it is an honor to present a retrospective dedicated to the work of legendary Mexican filmmaker Julio Bracho.