Mexican National Cinema

MEXICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Mexican National Cinema offers an account of the development of Mexican cinema from the intense cultural nationalism in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, through the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1940s and the Nuevo Cine of the 1960s, to the renaissance in Mexican cinema in the 1990s. The book moves from broad historical and theoretical contexts, particularly theories of nation, emergent discourses of ‘mexicanidad’ and the establishment and development of the Mexican industry, towards readings of key film texts and genres. Films considered include: • Y tu mamá también • ¡Que viva México! • La mujer del puerto • El castillo de la pureza. In each case, Andrea Noble considers the representation of nation inherent in these films and genres placing an emphasis on the ways in which they intersect with debates in cultural history, particularly Mexico’s quest for modernity. Mexican National Cinema provides and thorough and detailed account of the vital and complex relationship between cinema and national identity in Mexico. Andrea Noble is reader in Latin American Visual Studies at the University of Durham. She is the author of Tina Modotti: Image, Texture, Photography (2000) and co-editor of Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative (2003). NATIONAL CINEMAS SERIES Series Editor: Susan Hayward AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL CINEMA Tom O’Regan BRITISH NATIONAL CINEMA Sarah Street CANADIAN NATIONAL CINEMA Chris Gittings FRENCH NATIONAL CINEMA, SECOND EDITION Susan Hayward GERMAN NATIONAL CINEMA Sabine Hake ITALIAN NATIONAL CINEMA 1896–1996 Pierre Sorlin NORDIC NATIONAL CINEMAS Tytti Soila, Astrid Söderbergh Widding and Gunnar Iversen SPANISH NATIONAL CINEMA Núria Triana-Toribio IRISH NATIONAL CINEMA Ruth Barton CHINESE NATIONAL CINEMA Yingjin Zhang MEXICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Andrea Noble Forthcoming titles: SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Jacqueline Maingard GREEK NATIONAL CINEMA Maria Stassinopoulou MEXICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Andrea Noble First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Ave, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Andrea Noble All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Noble, Andrea. Mexican national cinema / Andrea Noble. p. cm. – (National cinemas) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion pictures—Mexico. I. Title. II. Series: National cinemas series. PN1993.5.M4N63 2005 791.43′0972—dc22 2005005097 ISBN10: 0–415–23009–8 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–23009–4 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–23010–1 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–23010–0 (pbk) CONTENTS List of illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 On Mexican film studies 3 On Mexican cultural history 8 On the Mexican cinema’s industrial contexts 13 A note on nation, cinema and medium specificity 22 1 Remaking Mexican cinema 25 The happy ending 25 The geo-politics of Mexican cinema 27 The early years 30 La mujer del puerto (1933): stories of incest and cultural modernity 32 La mujer del puerto: the 1991 remake 40 The ultimate ‘dismodern’ irony 46 2 The Mexican revolution as moving memory 48 Watching the revolution 48 From faction to fiction: film and memory 51 Reviewing the revolution 54 Revising the revolution: from document to documentary 58 Memory and the mobile gaze 64 From shooting to applauding 68 3 The formation of a national cinema audience 70 In the beginning . 70 All the people started to come 72 All the people went, or remembered going to see . María Candelaria 79 v CONTENTS Looking outside María Candelaria 85 Notes on the cinema audience after the Golden Age 91 4 Melodrama, masculinity and the politics of space 95 The ubiquity of melodrama 95 Melodrama and Mexican cinema 97 Una familia de tantas 101 The politics of Mexican masculinity in crisis 106 Society, cinema and the 1970s 110 El castillo de la pureza 112 El Callejón de los Milagros 115 Closing comments 121 5 Seeing the Other through film 123 Departures 123 Eisenstein’s itinerary 127 Eisenstein’s influence 129 After Eisenstein 134 End of detour: Y tu mamá también 139 6 The politics and erotics of border culture 147 Looking across the border 147 Espaldas mojadas 150 El Jardín del Edén 158 The circular border 161 The specular border 165 Afterword 172 Notes 176 Appendix: Filmography 188 References 200 Index 000 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1 La mujer del puerto (Arcady Boytler, 1933) 35 1.2 La mujer del puerto (Arcady Boytler, 1933) 39 2.1 Memorias de un mexicano (Carmen Toscano, 1950) 67 2.2 Memorias de un mexicano (Carmen Toscano, 1950) 67 3.1 María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943) 83 3.2 María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943) 86 4.1 Una familia de tantas (Alejandro Galindo, 1948) 104 4.2 Una familia de tantas (Alejandro Galindo, 1948) 107 4.3 El castillo de la pureza (Arturo Ripstein, 1972) 113 4.4 El Callejón de los Milagros (Jorge Fons, 1994) 120 5.1 ¡Que viva México! (Sergei Eisenstein, 1979) 132 5.2 ¡Que viva México! (Sergei Eisenstein, 1979) 133 5.3 Tarahumara (Luis Alcoriza, 1964) 137 5.4 Tarahumara (Luis Alcoriza, 1964) 138 5.5 Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) 142 5.6 Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) 145 6.1 Espaldas mojadas (Alejandro Galindo, 1955) 153 6.2 Espaldas mojadas (Alejandro Galindo, 1955) 156 6.3 El Jardín del Edén (María Novaro, 1994) 167 6.4 El Jardín del Edén (María Novaro, 1994) 167 6.5 El Jardín del Edén (María Novaro, 1994) 168 6.6 ‘The Border/La frontera’ by Graciela Iturbide (1990) 169 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book exists thanks to the intellectual stimulation and support provided by many individuals and organisations. Forgoing the kind of narrative that conven- tionally accompanies acknowledgements, I’d simply like to list the colleagues, friends and family members who in different ways either provided advice and guidance, took the time to read and comment on drafts, opened my eyes to new ways of seeing things, or showed exceptional kindness and patience during some of the more difficult moments of the book’s production. These people include: Katie Grant, John King, Ian Macdonald, Alex Hughes, Jonathan Long, Ed Welch, Claire Lindsay, Nuala Finnegan, Paul Julian Smith, Jo Labanyi, Antonio Sánchez, Jens Andermann, Chris Perriam, Ignacio Durán (the UK is exceptionally lucky to have such a dynamic and generous cultural attaché at the Mexican embassy), Patricia Torres San Martín, staff at the Filmoteca de la UNAM in Mexico City, especially Antonia Rojas, at IMCINE, especially Guadalupe Ferrer, and the CIEC in Guadalajara, César Avilés Icedo, Julia Tuñón, John Mraz, Seth Fein, Susan Hayward, Miriam Haddu, students on my Mexican film courses at Durham – especially Tom Rowson and Alexia Richardson, Heather Fenwick, Denise Ward. And of course, Lalo and Alma. Books don’t get researched and written without funding and I would like to acknowledge three institutions for their generous financial support of this project: The Arts and Humanities Research Board and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores for research visits to film archives in Mexico and the Leverhulme Trust for a year’s research fellowship during which most of the book was drafted. I would especially like to thank the Trustees and Jean Cater of Leverhulme for their exceptional sensitivity at a difficult moment. For the same reason, everyone at Routledge has been more than kind and patient; in particular, I would like to thank Aileen Irwin, Katherine Sheppard and Sandra Jones. Finally, although they are no longer here, I thank my mother, Joyce and my grandmother, Phyllis. viii INTRODUCTION Para su público, los ‘mitos’ del cine nacional son puentes de entendi- miento, rostros y figuras privilegiadas que asumen la biografía colectiva, encarnaciones de experiencias pasadas y presentes. For its audience, the ‘myths’ of the national cinema are bridges of understanding, privileged faces and figures that stand in for collective biography, embodiments of past and present experiences. (Monsiváis 1990: 39) Ask an urbanite Mexican to make a selection of the classic moments and key protagonists – the myths – that evoke and emblematise Mexican cinema in the contemporary popular imagination and chances are they would not struggle to do so. As one of Latin America’s most commercially successful film industries, the institutions that constitute Mexican cinema have generated a panoply of movies, directors and stars which occupy a privileged position in the popular imagination both within the Republic itself, and across the Spanish-speaking world and those parts of the United States with a high density of Latinos. For the Mexican film buff, the list might include, in no particular order, some of the following: archetypal couples – Tito Guízar and Esther Fernández in Allá en el Rancho Grande (Over at the Big Ranch, Fernando de Fuentes, 1936); Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz in María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943), Pedro Infante and Blanca Estela Pavón in Nosotros los pobres (We the Poor, Ismael Rodríguez, 1948) and its sequels. The inventory might incorporate iconic landscapes both rural and urban. The central plateau of the Bajío region with its sculptural cacti and infinite skies as captured by the lens of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa and inhabited by proud and picturesque Indians. The working-class barrios of the nation’s metropolises and particularly its capital, with their sleazy cabarets populated with exotic dancers such as the Cubans Ninón Sevilla or María Antonieta Pons, or the starkly realistic urban environment of Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned, Luis Buñuel, 1950).

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