Mexico's Golden Age of Cinema: Photos

¡Vamonos con Pancho Villa! (Let's Go With Pancho Villa!) is often considered the first feature of the Mexican golden age. Directed by Fernando de Fuentes, its mix of revolutionary drama and romance was later imitated in countless other films going forward.

Compared to Hollywood versions of Pancho Villa and Mexican independence, the movie avoids the typical happy ending common to American feature films.

Photo: Still from ¡Vamonos con Pancho Villa!, 1936.

Mexican cinema had its fair share of stars, but none were as big as Mario Moreno Reyes—known by his stage name Cantinflas. His fast-talking and witty persona was a mainstay of Mexican comedy, starting with his debut feature in 1937, No te engañes corazón (Don't Fool Yourself Dear).

Cantinflas' comedy usually had a social component to it, often portraying impoverished farmers or peasants. His work “always has this social comment because he's making fun of social classes in Mexico,” says Viejo. Though Cantinflas tried hard to make a go of it in Hollywood, he never achieved the same level of fame as he had in Mexico.

Photo: Mario Moreno "Cantinflas," 1940.

Dolores del Río, who made her Spanish-language debut in 1943’s Flor Silvestre, was one of several actresses who began a career in English-speaking features and then went to work in Mexico. Born María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete, del Río was marketed as a generic “exotic” actress in Hollywood. It wasn’t until the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1940s, when the United States allied with Mexico, that del Río was able to embrace her Mexican roots.

She worked regularly with gold age director Emilio "El Indio" Fernández on several films, including María Candelaria, the first Latin American feature to win the Palme d’Or.

Photo: Dolores del Río as the lead dancer in a scene from In Caliente, 1935.

Much like in the United States, Mexico developed its own version of the film noir genre alongside the outbreak of World War II, showcasing society's hidden underbelly.

“Mexican films of the 1940s and ’50s tell an entirely different story of a country at once energized and disenchanted by modernity,” writes Imogen Sara Smith in Hot Shadows: A Sampling of Mexican Film Noir. Films like Rosauro Castro (1950) and La Noche Avanza (Night Falls) (1952) illustrate this change.

“Charged with vitality, confidence and cultural pride, these films are also haunted by a sense of estrangement, an obsession with moral rot lurking under shiny surfaces," Smith writes.

Photo: Pedro Armendáriz and Anita Blanch in La Noche Avanza, 1952.

A popular subgenre specific to the Mexican golden age was the rumberas film, “named for the female entertainers who brought Afro-Caribbean rhythms and dances to Mexico,” says Smith.

Films like 1950’s Aventura en Río (Adventure in Rio) and other rumberas would feature rumba dances, prioritizing lavish musical numbers and costumes, as well as melodramatic plots involving the heroine's journey from rags to riches.

Photo: Ninón Sevilla, one of the leading exponents of the rumberas subgenre, circa 1940s.

Mexican movie star Pedro Infante acted in over 60 features. Infante's heyday in the 1940s coincided with a large migration of people from the rural parts of Mexico into the cities. His recurring character Pepe el Toro in Nosotros los Pobres (We, the Poor) (1948), Ustedes los ricos (You the Rich) (1948) and Pepe el Toro (1953) became synonymous with the working class.

Infante’s career was cut short in 1957 when he died in a plane crash. Some cite the year of Infante’s death as the end of the Mexican golden age, according to Viejo.

Photo: Fans of Pedro Infante sing in front of his tomb during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death, Mexico City, April 15, 2007.

Director Luis Buñuel holds an interesting place in the Mexican golden age. Many consider his films Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) (1950) and El (1953) as the beginning of the end.

“In a country where everything is super macho—the ranchero, the mariachi singer—suddenly Buñuel arrives and creates this pathetic, neurotic lover,” says Viejo. Los Olvidados reached Mexico in 1951, after Buñuel had already earned huge international acclaim, explains Viejo. “The audiences in Mexico get ready for neorealism, a more realistic portrayal of the nation. So that myth of Mexico of the 1940s is over.”

Photo: Mexican actor Alfonso Mejía fights with another man in a scene from Los Olvidados, 1950.