During the 1930s, Mexico developed a robust film industry. In 1938, fifty-seven films were produced. The 1936 film Alla en el rancho grande (Out on the Big Ranch) won international acclaim and made the singing cowboy, the charro, an internationally recognized symbol of Mexico. From its beginnings, the Mexican film industry was highly nationalistic in that it almost exclusively dwelt on Mexican landscapes, customs, and events.254
After the 1938 nationalization of the oil industry, film production slumped due to the ensuing economic crisis. In addition, the fledgling Mexican film industry had to face Hollywood competition. At the end of the 1930s, Hollywood’s share of the Mexican market was 78.9 percent. The showing of other foreign films left Mexican film producers with a mere 6.5 percent of their domestic market. The lack of theaters also held back the film industry. In 1940, only 446 licensed movie theaters operated in Mexico. That year, Mexico produced only twenty-nine films.255
The Second World War snapped the Mexican film industry out of its doldrums. Hollywood shifted to propaganda films, lessening the competition Mexican films faced both domestically and in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. At the same time, U. S. wartime planners became concerned that the Spanish-speaking world would be viewing movies made in fascist Spain or neutral Argentina. As a result, the U. S. government’s wartime Office of Coordination of Inter-American Affairs came to the aid of Mexican film producers. Beginning in 1942, the United States supplied capital, equipment, and technical support to the Mexican film industry. Twentieth-Century Fox donated sound equipment. In 1944, RKO supported the creation of Churubusco Studios, which became the most important studio in post-war Latin America. U. S. planners allocated scarce raw film stock to Mexico and denied it to Argentina.256
The Mexican government provided support for Mexican filmmaking by heavily subsidizing ticket prices and by removing import taxes on material used for filmmaking. In 1942, the Banco de Mexico, with the support of the Mexican government, organized the Banco Cinematografico, thus largely resolving the biggest problem faced by Mexican producers—the lack of capital.257
As a result of both U. S. and Mexican government support and lessened competition, feature film production soared from twenty-nine in 1940 to eighty-five in 1944. By 1943, the quality of Mexican films had risen so much that Variety suggested they could be thought of as “arty” replacements for French films, which were unavailable due to the war. Between 1940 and 1946, the number of motion-picture theaters grew to almost 1,000, more than double their number in 1940. Film had a much greater cultural impact than the static revolutionary murals.258
The Second World War ushered in what is known as the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Film momentum continued after the war, and by 1947 four studios employed 32,000 people to produce films. In the early 1940s, the comedia ranchera, set in rural areas, was a dominant theme. Singing cowboys Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante invoked a safely romanticized rural past as millions were moving to the cities. Other films, especially those directed by Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez, romanticized and attempted to dignify the life of the Indian. Even films sympathetic to the Indian created a false image of a simple, unspoiled life. In Maria Candelaria, the star, Dolores del Rio, who portrays a poor Indian, always emerges from her hut with dress and coiffure immaculate. Nonetheless, this film did accurately portray how Indians lived at the mercy of non-Indians.259
In the late 1940s, as Mexico continued to urbanize, directors increasingly chose urban settings. In both life and film, Mexico City sparkled as the shining star on Mexico’s horizon. A genre known as the cabaret film dealt with the tragic life of the naive country girl who went astray and ended up in a brothel. If the comedia ranchera stood for traditional values, the cabaret film dramatized the breakdown of these values as Mexico urbanized and corruption flourished.260
A common characteristic of 1940s films was their dealing with politically safe themes. The most powerful national institutions—the local and national governments, the police, the Church, and the wealthy—were portrayed as benign if not altogether above reproach. Politicians, extreme poverty, social criticism, and open sexuality were excluded.261
After the Second World War, Hollywood films began to flood the Mexican market again. In 1953, 226 U. S. films premiered in Mexico, while only eighty-seven Mexican ones did. The inescapable U. S. film presence in Mexico led journalist Paulo Antonio Paranagua to comment, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to Hollywood.” Mexico attempted to protect its domestic market by taxing the exhibition of foreign films. In response, the United States slapped a retaliatory tax on Mexican films, depriving Mexico of the lucrative U. S. market. Hollywood filmmakers not only had much larger budgets than their Mexican counterparts but also had the active support of the U. S. State Department to regain export markets. In order to receive allocations of still-scarce raw film for its domestic film industry, Spain had to grant U. S. film exports privileged access to its domestic market. This effectively shut out Mexican exports.262
Films remained politically bland since the government had the legal right to prohibit the production or exhibition of any film. Julio Bracho’s 1960 film, La sombra del caudillo, a lightly fictionalized account of the ugly power struggle among ex-revolutionaries, was immediately censored and remained unseen for thirty years.263
During the 1960s, the immense popularity of the TV soap opera undermined the film industry as resources were shifted from local film production toward TV, which, since it was not competing directly with Hollywood, was more profitable.264
World History
