Espectáculo a diario – 
Popular Mexican Cinema 1940–1970

The 2023 Locarno Film Festival Retrospective “Espectáculo a diario – Mexican Popular Cinema 1940–1970” was a sensation for many. Audiences were astonished by (gender) politically subversive musicals (LA CORTE DE FARAÓN), modern melodramas (MÁS FUERTE QUE EL AMOR), surrealist comedies (EL CASO DE LA MUJER ASESINADITA), disturbing Westerns (LOS HERMANOS DEL HIERRO), jolly superhero extravaganzas in bright colors (LA MUJER MURCIÉLAGO) and were more and more surprised with each passing day as to why they had never heard of any of these adventurous gems, pioneering in both form and content. And it’s no surprise: the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema from the 40s to the 60s has become somewhat of a blank space. While there is an awareness of its stature and significance, there is otherwise little of knowledge of it, also because even the minimal canon of big names and venerable treasures it encompasses is barely attended to in everyday cinephile life between archive cinemas and festivals. What has been entirely forgotten is the integral part Mexican films used to form in the day-to-day business distribution in those decades: in the 1950s, for example, the Rumberas genre was one of the most widely distributed forms of cinematic erotica. The same applies to just how cosmopolitan the country was in those decades and how open to the world its film production was – some directors worked here for shorter or longer periods of time, including the Argentinian master of style Tulio Demicheli or the wandering Chilean auteur Tito Davison, while others made Mexico their home, such as Alfredo Bolongaro-Crevenna (MUCHACHAS DE UNIFORME), who had fled the Nazi terror, or René Cardona, who was born in Cuba and received his training in Hollywood.

The Locarno retro thus started with a question: why not approach the classic heyday of Mexican cinema via the sort of films which the masses watched both locally and across the world back then? This lead to turn to re-engaging with the question of what actually was mass culture and what it made possible. The answer is: an art of inner disquiet, the constant search for new forms and stories, ideally as close to the zeitgeist as possible. Thus in LLÉVAME EN TUS BRAZOS, the political conditions in the countryside are wrangled over with a Rumbera swing of the hips, the Pachuco-noir EL SUAVECITO examines Mexico’s relationship with its northern neighbor, which is marked by deep-set neuroses, while the strangely Varda-esque DÍAS DE OTOÑO makes the modernization of everyday life in Mexico City tangible through the story of a woman whose behavior cannot be deciphered. (Olaf Möller)

Arsenal is presenting a selection of 13 films put together by Olaf Möller, who was responsible for programming the retrospective – each of them hopefully proves to be a door into an astonishing new expanse and invites viewers to embark on a journey of discovery. 

With thanks to the Locarno Film Festival and Olaf Möller and Roberto Turigliatto, curators of the retrospective “Espectáculo a diario – Las distintas temporadas del cine popular mexicano”.