THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
1 (2001): 38-42
© 2001 National Communication Association

A Century of Mexican Cinema

David Wilt

Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel, editors.   Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers.  Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1999.  xiv + 313 pages.  Notes, index, photos. $55.00 (cloth); $21.95 (paper). 

Mexican cinema has been largely overlooked in film studies, and, consequently, film literature. For many years, there were only two books in English that focused solely on motion pictures made in Mexico--Carl J. Mora's general history Mexican Cinema (1982 and 1989), and The Mexican Cinema: Interviews with Thirteen Directors by Beatriz Reyes Nevares (a translation from the Mexican original, 1976).  Some additional information appeared in broader works on Latin American cinema, but until the 1990s Mexico was largely uncharted territory for non-Mexican film scholars.

The problem was at least partly the result of a Catch-22 situation: film critics and historians, who did not speak Spanish and had almost no access to the majority of the more than 4,000 sound feature films produced in Mexico, knew little about the topic.  This translated into almost no critical dialogue in the area and consequently no production of, or demand for, books on the subject.

Fortunately, in recent years the vacuum has begun to fill up.  In Mexico, interest in their own film history has been on the rise. In addition to a number of scholarly and historical books, mass market publications such as Somos magazine--which converted to a "nostalgia" format last year and saw its sales increase sharply--and a series of lavishly-illustrated star biographies published by Editorial Clío have helped preserve an awareness among Mexicans of their cultural heritage in the face of the overwhelming Hollywood hegemony.

Literature in English on Mexican cinema has also increased, albeit at a slower pace.  The new books generally fall into two categories, anthologies with a broad scope (such as Mexican Cinema, 1995, a translation from the French original, edited by Paulo Antonio Paranaguá) and more narrowly-focused monographs (like Charles Ramírez Berg's Cinema of Solitude, 1992).  However, the language barrier (very few Mexican movies are available with sub-titles or dubbed into English) still continues to confine the study of Mexican films to a kind of intellectual ghetto, accessible only to those who understand Spanish.

Mexico's Cinema is an anthology volume consisting of an introduction, epilogue, and 12 chapters.  The chapters are arranged in three chronological sections, each with a brief introduction: "The Silent Cinema," "The Golden Age," and "The Contemporary Era." Editors Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel have assembled a lineup of contributors that is very nearly evenly split between Mexico- and U.S.-based film scholars, illustrating the strides towards internationalization that the study of Mexican cinema has made in recent years. 

Just as the contributors may be separated into two groups, the essays in the book are also divided.  About half are fairly broad "industry history" chapters, while the remaining entries focus on specific stars, genres, directors, or films.  Most chapters have at least some photographs or poster reproductions, although these are at times somewhat incongruous with the text or, at worst, not really relevant.

Mexico's Cinema begins with Gustavo A. García's survey of the silent film era in Mexico.  For a number of reasons--the Mexican Revolution among them--Mexico did not develop a silent film industry, although there were a number of dedicated filmmakers who struggled against the odds to make movies as early as 1896.  This section and Federico Dávalos Orozco's subsequent essay on the first five years of sound cinema in Mexico--when an "industry" did become established, albeit precariously--are short but comprehensive historical overviews.

The "Golden Age" of Mexican cinema is a rather vaguely-defined period (roughly, the 1940s) which saw the development of a star system, significant leaps in technical prowess, and substantial annual production totals.  Furthermore, a number of films made during this era achieved a level of artistic and popular acclaim, and are still remembered with nostalgia.  Perhaps as a gesture towards affirmative action (not to say political correctness), the Golden Age section of Mexico's Cinema begins with an essay by Patricia Torres de San Martín on Adela Sequeyro and Matilde Landeta, the only two Mexican women directors with significant careers prior to the 1970s.  San Martín's chapter is interesting, if brief, but Sequeyro and Landeta were hardly major figures in the overall scheme of things (Sequeyro directed or co-directed three features, Landeta four), and are chiefly remembered for their valiant efforts to persevere in a male-dominated industry.

Conversely, Carlos Monsiváis's essay on Cantinflas and Tin Tan examines the careers of two of the most famous and popular stars of the Golden Age and beyond (Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" made movies from the 1930s into the 1980s, and Germán Valdés "Tin Tan" appeared in films from the 1940s until his death in the early 1970s).   This star-oriented chapter is followed by editor Hershfield's examination of the way in which cinema of the Golden Age treated race and ethnicity.  A significant majority of the Mexican population has both Spanish and indigenous blood, so the concept of "race" is often intertwined with socio-economic and even political issues.  Mexican films of the Golden Age reflect the complexity of this topic, although often in a rather oblique manner.

Rafael Hernández Rodríguez contributes a similarly broad-based essay, discussing Golden Age melodramas and social comedies with urban settings.  Mexico City's importance grew exponentially during the mid-twentieth century, and a number of filmmakers--notably Luis Buñuel, Ismael Rodríguez, and Alejandro Galindo--utilized the city as a stage for films with significant amounts of social commentary.  Hernández Rodríguez discusses a number of crucial films in detail to illustrate his thesis. 

Seth Fein's chapter, immediately following, dispenses almost entirely with analysis of films, genres, or stars, and instead investigates the economic and political forces (mostly from north of the border) that affected the Mexican film industry after World War Two.  The industry had flourished during the war, not the least because the U.S. government provided material support in an effort to promote Mexican films--the product of a war-time ally--in the rest of Latin America.  But once the war was over, Hollywood's desire for hegemony supplanted the war-time cooperation.  This is the longest chapter in the book, and makes fascinating reading.

The Golden Age, viewed in terms of the quality of Mexican cinema, did not end abruptly: technically proficient and at times artistically interesting films were made well into the 1950s.  However, the industry itself began a swift and steady decline throughout the decade.  Eduardo de la Vega's contribution chronicles the efforts made by the government, the industry, and filmmakers to retain their audience in the face of foreign imports, television, and other factors. Various solutions were proposed--color, wide-screen, bigger budgets, lower budgets, new genres, a return to old favorites--but gradually Mexican cinema lost its coveted "middle-class" audience and the annual production became heavily skewed towards inexpensive program pictures intended for the proletariat.

The "Contemporary Era" section of the book begins with an informative essay by David R. Maciel on the relationship between the Mexican film industry and the government of Mexico over the past 30 years.   Unlike the situation in Hollywood--where filmmakers strenuously resist any attempts by the government to involve itself in their business--Mexico's recent history is one of constant give-and-take between the film industry and the government.  For much of the 1970s, the government was the de facto producer of many feature films, and even today provides financing for some features. Major theatre chains and distribution outlets were also government-owned.  Government control of production, distribution, and exhibition meant filmmakers were often at the mercy of bureaucrats, which led to censorship and self-censorship of film content.  By the early 1990s, production, distribution, and exhibition were back in private hands, but there are still unresolved issues regarding how much assistance the industry should get from the government in terms of financing, exhibition quotas, and other protectionist measures.

While Tijuana and San Diego are geographically close, they exist in different worlds, and Norma Iglesias' chapter on "border cinema" examines the relationship of Mexican cinema with its audience on either side of the border.  This chapter seems too short to cover its topic: it tries to discuss film content, demographics of the audience, and the film-going experience in a few pages.  However, the essay does include a very revealing section describing the reaction of a San Diego film audience to the screening of Tres veces mojado [Three Times a Wetback] (1989).

Editors Maciel and Hershfield contribute a short overview of the images of women in recent Mexican cinema.  While brief, the chapter does discuss a number of films in some detail, and also points out the great strides women filmmakers have made since the era of Adela Sequeyro and Matilde Landeta.  The book's final chapter is by Ann Marie Stock, who examines Mi Querido Tom Mix and Cronos (both 1992) in the light of film globalization.  These two films were made in Mexico, and have  uniquely Mexican aspects, but at the same time they are "transnational" in many ways.

Overall, Mexico's Cinema demonstrates a high level of scholarship and readability throughout.  A book like this must tread a fine line: the essays cannot be too specific and arcane for readers not familiar with Mexican films, nor can they be so basic and simple that they are of little interest to those who do have a knowledge of the topic.  Mexico's Cinema achieves this equilibrium; it should both spark interest in the topic and provide fresh insight for veterans of Mexican cinema scholarship. 

The book does contain a few minor gaffes and typos, which is to be expected.  However, at least some of these should have been caught by the editors.  First, in Carlos Monsiváis's essay, screen idol "Pedro" (Infante) is erroneously identified as actor Pedro Armendáriz (this should have been obvious, since the chapter discusses the popular grief after the actor's death in 1957, whereas Armendáriz did not die until 1963).  Eduardo de la Vega's chapter mistakenly refers to the union working at the América studios as STPC, when it was actually the rival STIC that had been barred from feature production and used the América "series" as a backdoor solution to this ban.  Errors like these are difficult to countenance, since they deal with fairly well-known facts. 

Still, the general impression is that of a well-crafted project by a very competent group of scholars, resulting in an important and useful book on an unfairly neglected national cinema. 

Dr. David Wilt is a librarian at the University of Maryland.