08 · 04 · 23

"Spectacle every Day. Essays on Classical Mexican Cinema, 1940-69": Interview with Alonso Díaz de la Vega and Jorge Negrete

Gabriela Martínez

Gabriela Martínez

Translator, Emilio Cervantes

This year, the Locarno Film Festival will include in its program a retrospective dedicated to Mexican popular cinema called “Espectáculo a diario – Las distintas temporadas del cine popular mexicano” (Spectacle every Day – The different periods of Mexican popular cinema) curated by programmer Olaf Möller with the collaboration of critic Roberto Turigliatto.

This retrospective is defined as an “in-depth exploration of the cinematic production in Mexico from the 1940s to the 1960s. Three decades of exceptional creativity filled with gods and goddesses of the screen and extraordinary filmmakers who have inspired the next generation of cinephiles.”

"Espectáculo a diario — Las distintas temporadas del cine popular mexicano" will feature works by Emilio Fernández, Alejandro Galindo, Chano Urueta, Miguel Melitón Delgado, Juan Bustillo Oro, Gilberto Martínez Solares, among many others, and will showcase 36 "rare" films, including never-before-seen films, from various collections, mostly from Filmoteca UNAM, and in collaboration with institutions such as the Mexican Cinematography Institute (IMCINE, by its acronym in Spanish), Cineteca Nacional, the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), Churubusco Studios and Permanencia Voluntaria, among others.

As part of this retrospective, Mexican film critics Alonso Díaz de la Vega and Jorge Negrete were invited to edit the book Spectacle every Day. Essays on Classical Mexican Cinema, 1940-69, which gathers a number of essays written by different Mexican authors, with diverse perspectives on the history of Mexican classic cinema.

The festival had the opportunity to talk with the critics responsible for the compilation of the essays that are part of this book published by the Locarno Film Festival, who shared with us a little about the process of making it.

FICM: How did you get involved in this project?

Alonso Díaz de la Vega: Olaf Möller, who is the main programmer of the retrospective, came to us. In fact, it is an idea that he had already planned a long time ago and had discussed with us. Jorge and I advised him on some things. He also talked a lot with Hugo Villa Smythe, director of the UNAM Film Library, in order to have a local perspective on what he was already proposing for the retrospective. But the truth is that I would say he did not need that. Olaf is a person of unfathomable intelligence and astonishing knowledge. Many of the films, even the least known ones in the retrospective, were his idea.

Olaf has a very, very complete knowledge of the Mexican film industry and everywhere, and even the political history of Mexico, that sort of thing. So, in that sense, the involvement was minimal, but what interested Olaf was to pair the retrospective with a book, as is usually done at film festivals. He wanted it to be a compilation of ideas of Mexican authors, so he asked Jorge Negrete and me to be in charge of editing this book.

Actually, we only wrote the introduction, but we were in charge of the organization of the subjects and authors, and of helping and assisting them in the process of developing the texts. That was our role, and we are going to spend a couple of days in Locarno to participate in a panel on the subject and to present some of the movies. That keeps us really excited as well.

Jorge Negrete: It was really through Alonso because we met Olaf in a panel where he and Alonso participated a few years ago. From there we had the opportunity to hang out and we got along well, we gave him a tour around the city. He asked for very specific things, he didn't want a typical tourist experience, he was looking for something much more real. He was very interested, for example, in wrestling, mezcals, eating insects and pre-Hispanic food. He was especially interested in the popular side of things. So, from that point we talked about Mexican cinema, about which he is a great admirer. We began to exchange ideas and suddenly the proposal came up for us to participate in some way or another in the retrospective that he was already preparing. First, we began by suggesting some titles that Olaf and Robert may have not thought of. Later came the invitation to edit a book of essays with Mexican contemporary critics that was a pair to the retrospective.

FICM: Which authors participated in writing these essays?

ADV: One of the things that mattered the most to us was to present new and diverse perspectives on the history of Mexican classic cinema. Thus, except for Miguel Marías, who is probably the most important Spanish critic alive, all the authors are Mexicans under 40 years old. Fernando Mino is probably the oldest of them, but everyone else is below that age.

We cared a lot for equality too, so there are five women and five men involved in the book. People like Adriana Bellamy, a very important UNAM academic, who is really close to Jorge Ayala Blanco, which is why she wrote about him. Ana Laura Pérez, former editor of Revista Icónica, writes about Gloria Schoemann. Karina Solórzano, Lucrecia Arcos, and Amira Ortiz, who are up and coming film critics, are very important to us because of the perspective they have on femininity and sexuality. We have texts written by them precisely around these themes.

Ana Laura analyzes the career and role in the history of Mexican classic cinema of Gloria Schoemann, who was a great editor working on hundreds of films, some of the most important, especially those of Emilio Fernández. Lucrecia discusses how Mexican actresses formed, from a femininity expressed in gesture, a sort of school of melodramatic acting. Therefore, it is a highly interesting text.

Karina Solórzano, on the other hand, discusses about sexuality in the cinema of rumberas and wrestlers. This is a topic that we considered very original, because normally when we talk about eroticism in Mexican classic cinema, the focus is on the female figure, but it also deals with the male figure, on how the imaginary of the wrestler is constructed not only as a powerful figure but also as an erotic one, right? It is exciting.

We also have texts by Fernando Mino, a very important researcher who wrote about how Mexican cinema turned into a vehicle for the PRI's modernity imaginary, how cinema somehow helped to solidify the PRI's idea of modernity. There are some very interesting ideas that try to provide new perspectives.

Miguel Marías is there to talk to us about foreign filmmakers, but not the usual ones, because normally we talk about Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza, but he chose to talk about Tulio Demicheli, and Tito Davison, who are somewhat more forgotten filmmakers in the memory of Mexican classic cinema. We thought it was quite interesting that he, coming from a perspective from out of Mexico, chose the careers of these directors.

We have a formal analysis of Julio Bracho's work, by Abraham Villa, a young critic. A very analytical text, very keen to demonstrate, based on one film in particular, Llévame en tus brazos (1954), the formal qualities of Mexican cinema of that period, which I believe are often not highlighted, as is the case, for instance, with certain Hollywood auteurs.

There is always an analysis around Gabriel Figueroa's work, his imagery with Emilio Fernández, how he constructs femininity, mexicanity, among other things, but we found it very interesting how other directors, particularly Julio Bracho, were also masters of form.

He also talks a bit about Ismael Rodriguez, who is a figure that is often regarded as conservative, but if we analyze him visually, we will realize that he is a very, very creative and very original figure. He is someone who has some camera movements, some visual tricks, a very particular way of expressing himself through the images. That is very important, and that is why we have a text by José Emilio González which I think is also very original because it talks about how Mexican classic cinema portrays language; Jorge and I have come across, for example, with relatives who suddenly speak slightly like certain characters from Mexican classic cinema, and I think that many people in Mexico have relatives like that, right? Who grew up with Cantinflas or the India María, especially with comedic figures that are characterized by how they depict their manner of speech. Then, José Emilio analyzes how Mexican classic cinema in films by Juan Bustillo Oro or Emilio Fernández use language to construct ideas about class, even about political identity, about how the albur is used in a subversive way. Thus, there are very interesting things there.

We also have a text written by Rafael Paz and José Luis Ortega, both critics with a strong interest in gender cinema. They make a journey through the whole notion of morbidity expressed in Mexican cinema, from horror movies to wrestler movies, and how sci-fi is also involved. They seek to guide us to the less known names, because normally we think of El Santo, or Blue Demon, but there were also female wrestlers' movies. There are also a few of Chano Urueta's films that I believe are remembered within certain very small circles, but not as much, for example, as those of René Cardona.

I think it is a huge book in its topics, a book that mainly tries to be not only an introduction for those who do not know the vast universe of Mexican classic cinema, but also for those who already know it and yet can find some new things and, overall, fresh perspectives.

FICM: Did you tell the authors about which path to follow or which themes to pursue in drafting those essays, or what was the process like?

ADV: Yes, in this case, the process started with us thinking about the topics that we consider might be interesting, in order to slightly control and avoid the common ground. Thus, Jorge and I thought about the topics and based on each one we thought about who we could give them to, considering that they would represent voices of our generation in order to discuss these issues in depth.

FICM: And how did you select the authors?

ADV: They are authors whom we know personally, but mostly they are authors whose work we have been following for a long time. Jorge, for example, has worked with some of them in his magazine El Cine Probablemente.

They are authors that we knew thanks to their trajectory and the particular perspective that they formed and have developed. For example, Karina seemed perfect for the theme of sexuality in the cinema of rumberas and wrestlers, because to begin with she is an avid cinephile and, also, someone who is very interested in the theme of sexuality. So, there was something that worked very well together. In Amira's case, who has this interest in a certain type of melodramatic cinema, she especially likes Korean melodrama, we thought she might be interested in talking about melodrama, Mexican melodrama. I don't think I mentioned the text she wrote, but we also like it very much because it is a bit about how a modern melodrama is built from Días de otoño (1962), by Roberto Gavaldón, which goes beyond many of the conventions of how love and femininity were represented up to that point, and of how Pina Pellicer also has a key role in all of that. Amira was perfect for us to talk about that.

So, it was mostly that; the intention was not for them to write the text that we would have thought of, but to begin from a suggestion, from an idea on how to deal with certain things that we felt had a deep connection with them.

FICM: Jorge, what themes drew your attention the most out of those that integrate the book?

JN: I think something that we discussed from the beginning during the first editorial meetings was the importance of avoiding the sociological tradition, the historical and political analysis, because it is something that has prevailed for a long time in film studies or film analysis in Mexico or in the country's cinematographic thinking. Therefore, there is obviously a very rich and deep tradition in that sense.

In Mexico there are many Mexican researchers who have followed that path, but we were more interested in offering a critical and more open vision in various aspects, including a broad view of what we consider to be important within the current critical scenario in Mexico.

That meant dealing with topics that might deviate slightly from the traditional. To think in some way or another: "The post-revolutionary films of Indio Fernandez", right? And its correlation with the revolution and the social changes, or just to make an approach to the golden age of Mexican cinema from a sociological point of view, but rather from the films' form, from the content itself and an analysis on the narrative, a formal analysis that we consider to be missing and that is now included in the book.

From there, taking into consideration that we were also asked for the book to be a guide, on one hand, for those who have no knowledge of Mexican cinema, of Mexican popular cinema of that period, and, on the other hand, to have something for those who are familiar with its contents, right? For those who perhaps are already familiar with the books by Rafael Aviña, Jorge Ayala Blanco, Carlos Bonfil, and Fernando Niño himself, who also participates in the book. Thus, to slightly expand that perspective and offer a broad perspective of what is currently being done in Mexico.

FICM: What did you gain from this experience? What feeling did it leave you with?

ADV: It was a very interesting experience for me in terms of rediscoveries, of discovering films that I had never heard of before and learning there were many of them that represented much more original imaginaries than the ones we thought of. For example, considering some of the films that are around here, we always think of Alejandro Galindo from his classic melodramas like ¡Esquina bajan! (1948), but Olaf had the idea of showing La mente y el crimen (1961), which is a very peculiar documentary that Galindo made about how the police of the then Distrito Federal solved a case of femicide which, back then, was still considered a homicide. Galindo follows the policemen and the detectives throughout the entire process. Although it is a somewhat pro-government film, it is very interesting for how it sometimes uses certain imagery similar to that of Hans Richter, which is German avant-garde cinema of the 1920's. There are things you see in that film that you would have never imagined as part of Alejandro Galindo's cinematographic imaginary. In a way, it was an experience for me to find other sides not only to certain filmmakers, but to Mexican classic cinema as a whole. Hopefully for the public, both readers and viewers of these films, it will be the same.

JN: It is gratifying to witness a strong interest in specific aspects of Mexican cinema. Perhaps the most difficult thing in the editorial aspect is to have expectations of the text and the writer or author takes you in a completely different direction. That is one of the things I learned as an editor in this particular process, that you can have a very clear approach. And say to the writer: "Hey, look, I would like it to be similar to this." Give them a very broad picture and tell them what we would like to focus on.

What really caught our attention is that each author, when facing the films, when watching them, focused on various aspects, things that we had not noticed, that perhaps did not depart too much from the main idea, but that definitely took a different approach. In this process there were also, naturally, disagreements, differences, editorial discussions, which led to the texts being enriched, which in some way or another could be further explored. So, it is not only a passive task in which texts are received, read, checked, proofread and then returned; they are texts in which there was real work, not only editorial, but also critical, because, at the end of the day, both Alonso and I work as critics, and I think it is inherent to that work and especially when we are talking about essays much closer to film criticism.

FICM: Will the book be available here or just over there in Locarno?

ADV: We do not know yet. It is a bilingual edition of the book, which was really important to us. I do not know how the distribution of it is going to work, but I would really like for the audience here to have the opportunity to read it, because I believe there are very interesting ideas about Mexican cinema by our writers, about how it can be interpreted more than 60 years, more than half a century, after the end of this classic period, at least based on what the retrospective states. Thus, yes, I think it would be very interesting for it to be read over here.