This year’s Noir City had an international theme and was highlighted by an all day noirathon of four, count ’em, FOUR classics from a storied era in Mexican cinema. This Fiesta of Mexican Noir was hosted by the Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller and Daniela Michel, an expert preservationist and historian of Mexican cinema and the founder and Director General of the Morelia International Film Festival.
Michel presented films by all three of the pillars of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema – Julio Bracho, Emilio Fernandez, and the Mexican director most identified with noir – or cine negro – Roberto Gavaldón.
Here’s the program:
- In the deliriously entertaining Night Falls (La Noche Avanza) (1952), Pedro Armendáriz plays a ladykiller who treats his women horribly – and is begging for a noirish downfall. Night Falls was directed by Roberto Gavaldón, the Mexican director most well-known for film noir. In a uniquely Mexican touch of noir torture, waterboarding is performed with tequila. Stay to the end for for cinema’s act of greatest canine revenge.
- Julio Bracho’s Another Dawn (Distinto Amancer) (1943) is a paranoid thriller about a heroic labor organizer (Pedro Armendáriz again) who has the evidence to expose corruption by the PRI, Mexico’s ruling party for 70 years.
- In Bracho’s Twilight (Crepusculo) (1945), a surgeon is tormented by an obsession, and then by guilt. When former lovers – now married to others – are isolated together in a weekend house party during a thunderstorm, it’s inevitable this concentrated passion, obsession and betrayal is going to explode.
- Salón México(1949) is an unusual contemporary noir directed by Emilio Fernandez, more often known for movies with rural and historical settings, Salon Mexico is a cabaretera, a uniquely Mexican genre about a woman with a heart of gold (Marga López here) who is forced by poverty to work as a singer in a sketchy nightspot or even as a prostitute. It’s also a time capsule of 1949 Mexico City.
Follow the links for my commentary on the films, images and where to find them.
