07 · 25 · 18

Dolores del Río: The triumph of introspection

Alonso Díaz de la Vega @diazdelavega1

Whether it’s holding a piglet or meeting again with her son who can’t recognize her, the image of Dolores del Río usually evokes the pain of losing something or of being about to lose it. Her face was too beautiful for her characters but realism was not one of cinema’s great concerns in her time. Films were actually searching for the sort of beauty that lies beyond everyday life, but Del Río had also a varied intensity. In her classical Mexican films she often represented the anguish of a country disorientated by revolution and particularly a femininity consumed by puritanism, misogyny and inequality. Of course, Del Río did much more than that and was also capable of playing twin sisters with opposing senses of morality and European peasants from tolstoyan adaptations. She could dance and sing but more than anything Dolores del Río knew how to adapt.

Curiously, Dolores del Río made less than 20 films in Mexico, which aren’t even the majority in her career, yet they brought her the largest success in every way. In films like Wild Flower (1943) and Portrait of Maria (1943), both directed by Emilio Fernández, Del Río would contribute to the Mexican cinematic canon unforgettable characters that express the immense pain of being born a woman. In some way they reflected Del Río’s personal difficulties as a teenage wife and a harassed actress. In The Abandoned (1945, dir. Emilio Fernández) Del Río plays the abnegated mother of a lost son when, in reality, she had suffered the trauma of a miscarriage. In Mexican cinema Del Río explored herself and contributed to the consolidation of film as an art form capable of reuniting the individual and the world around her.

Toward the 60’s Del Río returned to American cinema, where she played Elvis Presley’s mother in Flaming Star (1960, dir. Don Siegel) and worked with John Ford in Cheyenne Autumn (1964). But her work as an actress would become more infrequent due to her interests as a philanthropist. In the 70’s she supported the founding of the Festival Cervantino and she founded the Rosa Mexicano group, which devoted itself to protecting children and women in show business. Her last film would be The Children of Sanchez (1978, dir. Hall Bartlett).

Del Río died in 1983 but she comes back often when someone pronounces the name of her beloved Lorenzo Rafael like her in Portrait of Maria or when someone recalls her duel with María Félix for the love of a general in The Soldiers of Pancho Villa (1959, dir. Ismael Rodríguez). Her body is gone but her moving pains will live as long as there is cinema.