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UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title 'Muchos Méxicos': widening the lens in Rulfo's cinematic texts Author(s) Brennan, Dylan Joseph Publication date 2015 Original citation Brennan, D. J. 2015. 'Muchos Méxicos': widening the lens in Rulfo's cinematic texts. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2014, Dylan J. Brennan. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Embargo information No embargo required Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1960 from Downloaded on 2021-09-29T11:54:45Z TITLE: 'Muchos Méxicos': Widening the Lens in Rulfo's Cinematic Texts. AUTHOR: Dylan Joseph Brennan, M.A. QUALIFICATION SOUGHT: PhD INSTITUTION: National University of Ireland, Cork. (University College Cork) DEPARTMENT: Centre for Mexican Studies, Department of Hispanic Studies. MONTH AND YEAR OF SUBMISSION: Originally submitted July, 2014— resubmitted after Minor Changes in February 2015 HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: Prof. Nuala Finnegan, Director of Centre for Mexican Studies. SUPERVISOR: Prof. Nuala Finnegan, Director of Centre for Mexican Studies. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Widening the Focus in Rulfo's Cinematic Texts – An Introduction P.1 1.1 Texts for Cinema? – Rationale and Paramaters P.1 1.2 Methodology P.7 1.3 Muchos Méxicos P.10 1.4 Widening (not shifting) the Focus P.15 1.5 Objectives P.18 2. Inframundos and Fractured Visions – El despojo and La fórmula secreta P.22 2.1 Conception and Synopsis: An Introduction to El despojo P.22 2.2 Published Versions of the Text and Critical Responses P.26 2.3 Eternal Hardships: The Structure of El despojo P.31 2.4 El Inframundo – The Nahual and Other Indigenous Elements P.35 2.5 Land and Property and Women – Ownership and Dispossession in El despojo P.54 2.6 La fórmula secreta: An Introduction P.58 2.7 La fórmula secreta : A Synopsis P.66 2.8 Surrealism, Montage and La fórmula secreta P.70 2.9 Surrealist film and the problem of psychic automatism P.72 2.10 La fórmula secreta: dreams and hallucinations of mexicanidad P.75 2.11 Eisenstein, montage and La fórmula secreta P.77 2.12 Modernisation, machinery and meat production in La fórmula secreta P.79 2.13 Animal Slaughter: Surrealist Abjection P.81 2.14 La fórmula secreta – The Extra-Diegetic Gaze P.86 2.15 Rulfo’s Text - Monologues of Estrangement? P.94 2.16 Identity and La fórmula secreta P.104 2.17 Fragments Within Fragments, Conclusions P.112 3. Pedro Páramo Re-Visited as Melodrama – El gallo de oro P.116 3.1 El gallo de oro – An Introduction P.116 3.2 El gallo de oro: ¿Texto para cine? P.119 3.3 El gallo de oro: Synopsis P.126 3.4 Musical Drama in Atemporal Mexico P.129 3.5 El gallo de oro: Narrative Style P.138 3.6 Piedra Imán and Rock on the Plain: El gallo de oro and Pedro Páramo P.143 3.7 La Caponera – Rulfo’s María Félix? P.159 3.8 'De la nada a la nada’- Cyclical Poverty and Knowing One’s Place P.172 3.9 Melodrama and Realism – El gallo de oro on screen P.176 3.10 El Imperio de la Fortuna: Seeing Rulfo Through Ripstein (and Buñuel) P.194 3.11 El gallo de oro On Page and Screen: Conclusions P.207 4. Infinite Regions – Conclusions P.214 4.1 Nothing New Here? – Rulfo’s Ouroboros P.214 4.2 New Directions P.219 Bibliography P.221 Appendix – La fórmula secreta: The Text P.229 Acknowledegments P.243 DECLARATION l, Dylan Joseph Brennan, declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted for another degree, either at University College Cork or elsewhere. Dylan Joseph Brennan It is difficult to overstate the importance of Juan Rulfo’s two major pieces of fictional narrative work—his haunting, enigmatic novel Pedro Páramo (1955) and his unrelenting depictions of the failures of post-revolutionary Mexico in his short story collection El Llano en llamas (1953). In her foreword to the Margaret Sayers Peden English translation, Susan Sontag hails Pedro Páramo as ‘not only one of the masterpieces of 20th Century world literature, but one of the most influential of the century’s books’. García Márquez has compared the influence of Rulfo on 20th Century world literature to that of Sophocles: ‘No son más de 300 páginas, pero son casi tantas y creo tan perdurables como las que conocemos de Sófocles’ and, completing this oft- repeated triumvirate of recommendations, Jorge Luis Borges has referred to Pedro Páramo as: ‘una de las mejores novelas de las literaturas de lengua hispánica, y aun de la literatura.’ Despite the praise heaped upon Rulfo’s two most famous books, when his third book of fiction, El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine, was finally published in 1980, just six years before his death, it was greeted with almost critical silence. It is precisely this publication that provides the focus of this investigation. The collection contains three texts—El despojo, La fórmula secreta and El gallo de oro. Constituting a third of the fictional work he published in his lifetime, expanding upon themes present in El Llano en llamas and Pedro Páramo while, at the same time, examining new ground, no thematic discussion of Rulfo’s written output is complete without including these texts. Yet they are frequently dismissed. In this way this investigation attempts to go some way towards filling this critical gap in the work of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. 1 CHAPTER ONE: WIDENING THE FOCUS IN RULFO’S CINEMATIC TEXTS—AN INTRODUCTION 1.1. Texts for Cinema?—Rationale and Paramaters 1953 saw the publication of Juan Rulfo’s collection of short stories El Llano en llamas and the novel, Pedro Páramo, appeared in 1955. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Rulfo’s two major pieces of fictional narrative work. In her foreword to the Margaret Sayers Peden English translation, Susan Sontag hails Pedro Páramo as ‘not only one of the masterpieces of 20th Century world literature, but one of the most influential of the century’s books’. (Rulfo 2000: 3) García Márquez has compared the influence of Rulfo on 20th Century world literature to that of Sophocles: ‘No son más de 300 páginas, pero son casi tantas y creo tan perdurables como las que conocemos de Sófocles’ (García Márquez 1983: 25) and, completing this oft-repeated triumvirate of recommendations, Jorge Luis Borges has referred to Pedro Páramo as: ‘una de las mejores novelas de las literaturas de lengua hispánica, y aun de la literatura.’ (Rulfo 2011: 23) Despite the praise heaped upon Rulfo’s two most famous books, when his third book of fiction, El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine, was finally published in 1980, just six years before his death, it was greeted with almost critical silence. So much so, in fact, that Sontag’s introduction seems to deny the very existence of El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine (1980): It is rare for a writer to publish his first books when he is already in his mid-forties, even rarer for his first books to be immediately acknowledged as masterpieces. And rarer still for such a writer never to publish another book. (Rulfo 2000: 3) It is precisely this publication that provides the focus of this investigation. El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine was published by Ediciones Era and was 2 accompanied by a foreword and explanatory notes provided by Mexican cinema expert, Jorge Ayala Blanco. The collection contains three texts—El despojo, La fórmula secreta and El gallo de oro. All three texts are inextricably linked to cinema and are analysed in detail, in both their written and filmed formats, in the following chapters. The peculiar nature of the genesis of each of these texts is discussed individually in the following chapters. At this juncture a short note on each of the films is warranted. Suffice it to mention, by way of an introduction, that, while the texts are clearly linked to cinema, not one of them constitutes a screenplay in the traditional sense. El despojo is a 12-minute film that was directed by Antonio Reynoso in 1960 and is based upon a story composed by Rulfo. However, Rulfo never set about typing up a screenplay or dialogue and acted more like co-director on set, verbally suggesting the argument and dialogues on a reportedly ad-hoc basis. The dialogues were later transcribed and included in El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine. In this way El despojo appears to take the form of a screenplay in the 1980 publication. La fórmula secreta is a 45-minute film directed by Rubén Gámez between 1964 and 1965. Rulfo was shown a segment of the film in which a group of male campesinos appear in an arid landscape and he subsequently composed a poetic monologue to accompany the campesino footage. The text composed by Rulfo for La fórmula secreta was eventually published in El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine. The definitive version of the text, with corrections, was published in El gallo de oro (2010) by the Fundación Juan Rulfo. Finally, El gallo de oro is a short novel that was adapted for the screen by Roberto Gavaldón (in conjunction with Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes) in 1964. It seems that, once the text was adapted for 3 the screen, Rulfo abandoned any plans he may have had for publishing it until, of course, he finally did so in 1980.