S. and I spent a long weekend up in Vancouver the other weekend to attend VIFF’s Mexico Noir series. Click through and read Sylvia Moreno Garcia’s essay on Mexico’s film noir during their golden age of cinema; if you’re lazy, though, the quick summary is that Mexico had its own film noir tradition in an era when Mexico was the largest producer of Spanish language movies in the world. Argentina and Spain were busy being fascist regimes, which always puts a pall on creativity. These movies are mostly unseen and unavailable today, so the chance to inject eight of them directly into my veins was too good to miss.
And man, it was amazing. I’d seen Victims of Sin before, and was pretty damned electrified by the music and acting and cinematographic brilliance. I wasn’t sure if I should expect a lot of musical numbers (answer: not universally but quite a few), similar levels of social commentary (yeah, a lot of that), or what. I wound up with a much better handle on the sensibilities of Mexican cinema of the time, and the knowledge that there’s a deep pool of film out there which will reward more exploration.
Gonna be difficult, though, since this stuff is woefully underavailable. Everything we saw was a restoration, which is nice; only two of them are available on physical media and the streaming picture isn’t much better.
I was struck by a few things. First off, there was a wide variety of stories told through the noir lens. Victims of Sin is a musical melodrama at heart, for example. The Skeleton of Mrs Morales is a flat-out comedy. Streetwalker and Another Dawn are political and social commentary. I wasn’t sure how wide the range would be; it was super wide. Clearly Mexico City studios were working with a wide range of viewpoints and filmmakers; this was a robust, mature film industry.
Second, everything was heightened. Every movie we saw had a ton of melodramatic elements, and while Moreno Garcia’s essay correctly notes that American movies like Mildred Pierce were just as melodramatic, the melodrama wasn’t as universal as what we saw last weekend. Big emotions, big passions. I think this is just a cultural tendency rather than a stereotype. As we explore more Mexican movies from the era, I hope to get a wider perspective incorporating other genres than noir.
Third, there was… how to put it? My instinct says we saw more noirs set among the wealthy than we would in a similar sample of American noirs. I sort of suspect this may be a cinematic myth – the movies were all aware of class at the same time as they implied class mobility was relatively easy. You marry the right person, or you get lucky, and your problems are solved. Things are never that easy in real life. Still, very interesting learning more about how Mexico thought of itself.
It’s awfully satisfying seeing some of the same actors and filmmakers through a few movies. In particular, we saw four movies directed by Roberto Gavaldón and three movies starring Arturo de Córdova. You get a sense of their range as artists. Gavaldón likes his morally questionable protagonists. This program was well curated and I’m sad we couldn’t stick around for every movie.
I liked every movie and if you want to read through all my reviews in detail, here’s the link. The two that really stood out for me were Another Dawn, a political drama that puts political corruption in the crosshairs, and In The Palm of Your Hand, which is a flat out masterpiece about a con artist who finds himself out of his depth.
Man, it kills me that the entire world of Mexican cinema from this era is so underviewed. If your local theater does a program similar to this, I strongly recommend making time for it – if a weekend’s sampling is any guide, you’re gonna see a lot of good movies.