03 · 20 · 25

Juan Rulfo and the silver screen

Rafael Aviña

Seventy years after the publication of Pedro Páramo, the figure of Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) grows and becomes more enigmatic and indecipherable, as it happens with his difficult and complex adaptation to film images. His short literary work, whose merits lay in the intensity of his prose and his atmospheres, also included the writing of screenplays and a fondness for photography, where he left testimony of his talent through the arid emotional landscapes and everyday ghosts that inhabit his stories.

The indigenous people, the rural space, the festivities and religious manifestations, and the solitude as a background are present in his work with the light, the pen and the screenwriter's machine: unassailable visions for countless filmmakers who were touched by his work and its mysteries. It was in 1955, only two years after the publication of El llano en llamas —translated into English as The Burning Plain and Other Stories—, that the first adaptation of his work was made: Talpa, directed by Alfredo B. Crevenna, about a woman who manipulates the passions of two brothers.

As a contrast to this picture, there was an experimental short film that exposed the scourges of rural exploitation and the cacicazgo¹ through phantasmagorical visual metaphors. El despojo (1958-1960), by cinematographer Antonio Reynoso, took advantage of the spaces and the aridity of the Mezquital Valley, which Rulfo imagined as he wandered and improvised the dialogues of the characters played by non-professional actors.

In 1962, Emilio “El Indio” Fernández traveled to Guatemala to film Paloma herida, a violent and fatalistic story starring Patricia Conde and Fernández himself in the role of the evil Danilo Zeta, based on a plot written by Fernández and adapted by Rulfo. El Indio is one of the central actors in Alberto Isaac’s El rincón de las vírgenes (1972), which adapted to the screen two of Rulfo’s tales: Anacleto Morones and El día del derrumbe, in a story that transformed the tragic attitude of Rulfo's characters into a joyful and bucolic pleasure.

In The Secret Formula (1964), an atypical and disturbing work that won the First Experimental Film Competition, its rural and urban images —such as that of the charro² on horseback chasing and beating a bureaucrat through the streets of the Historic Center of Mexico City or the frenetic camera circling in the middle of the Zócalo square— are complemented in a disturbing and poetic way by the texts written by the author of El llano en llamas. 

Another story with a Rulfo setting was En este pueblo no hay ladrones (1964), directed by Alberto Isaac and based on a story by Gabriel García Márquez. In this film, Juan Rulfo appears as an extra, playing a game of dominoes. That same year, a plot of Rulfo was adapted by Carlos Fuentes, García Márquez and director Roberto Gavaldón under the title: The Golden Cockerel, in the story of a humble town crier, Dionisio Pinzón (Ignacio López Tarso), obsessed with La Caponera, a palenque³ singer (Lucha Villa), lover of the brutal cockfighter Lorenzo Benavides (Narciso Busquets). Arturo Ripstein would make a crude and bitter version closer to Rulfo’s original plot: The Realm of Fortune (1986), starring Ernesto Gómez Cruz and Blanca Guerra. 

The phantasmagoric point of view with demonic chieftains appears in the versions of Pedro Páramo (1966), by Carlos Velo with John Gavin, and Pedro Páramo, el hombre de la media luna, by José Bolaños (1976), with Manuel Ojeda as the protagonist; both, far superior to the strange and intriguing contemporary version directed by the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, adapted by the Spaniard Mateo Gil, in 2024. The three films are set in the town of Cómala, inhabited by longings and ghosts, and are proof of the inaccessibility of Rulfo’s literature for Mexican cinema. Nevertheless, the first of them is a dazzling work with some superb moments and a stunning cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa. By the way, Bolaños himself, under the supervision of Carlos Velo and Manuel Michel, made the short documentary Que esperen los viejos/Emigrantes, about migration and misery in the Mexican countryside with texts written by Rulfo.

In Do You Hear the Dogs Barking? (1974), inspired by Rulfo’s story of the same name, French director Francois Reichenbach tells the story of an exotic and export-oriented Mexico, but at the same time discovers an unusual and anomalous province, and a chaotic and insensitive Mexico City. The disturbing vision of another Mexican province linked to Rulfo is found in the austere and fascinating film Los confines (1987), by Mitl Valdés. Meanwhile, Roberto Rochín made the project Purgatorio (2008), inspired by three stories by Rulfo, which he had previously made as medium-length films: Un pedazo de noche (1995), Paso del Norte (2002) and Después de la muerte (2005).

In addition, there are some remarkable short films inspired by his work, such as: Tras el horizonte, by Mitl Valdés; El hombre, by José Luis Serrato; Agonía, by Jaime Ruiz Ibáñez; Luvina, by Lucinda Martínez; La herencia de Matilde Arcángel, by Rafael Corkidi; Nepomuceno Juanito, by Jorge Bolado, and Zona cero, by Carolina Rivas. Also in 1997, Oscar Menéndez, who had already made the short film La cuesta de las comadres (1990) for university television with quotes by Rulfo, directed the documentary Rubén Jaramillo (1900-1962) a una historia mexicana, which included texts by Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes. Finally, as a sort of epilogue: El abuelo Cheno y otras historias (1995) and Del olvido al no me acuerdo (2000), both by Juan Carlos Rulfo, son of Juan Rulfo, track the emotional biography of the author of Pedro Páramo, in a curious family portrait and an attempt to discover the magical, fatalistic and impenetrable universe of one of Mexico's greatest writers.

Translated by Adrik Díaz

Translator's Notes

1. TN: A form of political, economic and territorial domination in which an individual or family, through the practice of bribes, kickbacks and threats, extends its power over others, outside or against the law.
2. TN: A rider who exhibits his skills in the handling of the lasso, in horse training and other equestrian exercises performed to handle cattle following Mexican country traditions. 
3. TN: Wooden fence where cockfights are held and some shows are offered during the fairs.