Monthly Archives: July 2017

07/22/17

Touch of Evil: Justice and the Law across the Mexican border

Touch of Evil (1958), acted and directed by Orson Welles, is a movie about violence, corruption and murder in the Mexican border town of Los Robles. The movie begins with the activation of a time-bomb mechanism. The explosion of this bomb will go on to unleash a series of events which will affect all the characters in the movie (main and small ones) and lead them to pain, tragedy, and death. The story-line is well-intertwined given that the bomb has a direct link to an American builder contractor and his girlfriend who are killed in the explosion.  This is to say that, the main characters in Touch of Evil, Mike Vargas (the Mexican detective) and Susan Vargas (Vargas’ wife), have to stop their honeymoon in the U.S- Mexico border town of Los Robles, when the explosion occurs. Mike Vargas and Susan Vargas will face the giant American Police captain Hank Quinlan who is brought to life by Orson Welles himself.

There are many excellent movie sequences in Touch of Evil, but I will be referring only to three segments of the film which stayed with me and which I think are important to explore. The first scene I want to analyze is the one after the car explodes at the crossing over the Mexican border. The second scene is the interrogation of Sanchez. Thirdly, the incriminating scene between Vargas, Menzies and Hank.

First, during the first minutes of the movie, the viewer gets to see the cross-border town of Los Robles and the security border check points on each side. Vargas, a Mexican police investigator, and his American wife Susan, cross the border by foot to the U.S’ side. Hence, the movie depicts a sort of free or fluid accessibility across the border in where people from both countries can come and go with no problem. The only question asked is: Are you American? For which Susan answers yes and this allows her and her husband to cross over the check-point and to enter U.S.A’s soil without showing a passport. Nevertheless, later in the same scene, the viewer can see how the American police enter Mexico illegally. This reference is important because it is not just the Mexicans who crossed illegally here but the Americans do it as well.

One of the lines which resonated with me came from the woman who drives with the contractor by car and are about to die, “I got this ticking noise in my head.” The ticking noise to which she is referring, as all the audience knows, is the time-bomb itself which is about to explode in the car. However, she is quickly dismiss by the border American officers with a simple, yes! And never gets around to ask what’s really happening. I find this scene interesting because the ticking bomb in her head counts the remaining time she and her boyfriend have left. Additionally, right after it, Susan appears talking with Mike saying, “You realize this is the first time we’ve been together in my country?” Mike replies back saying, “Do you realize I’ve not kissed you in an hour?” For this reason, I like the immediacy given to time in both lines marking the end for some and the beginning of suffering for others, as well as, their final triumph.

Second, the characterization of both, Mike Vargas and Susan Vargas, is exemplary of good people. Mike, a Mexican Narcotics officer main mission is to bring down the Grandi family and their illegal drug business. For her part Susan, a typical American-wife, follows her husband’s orders and suggestions to the letter. In a sense, their commitment to their marriage is demonstrated on screen. This is not to mention their undeniable love for each other (a romantic theme) and their resilience to remain good in the midst of evil which allows them to remain together in the end.

For instance, when Susan is waiting for her husband at the motel, she faces off the gang of Grandi’s boys. These men and women thugs and drug addicts enter Susan’s room in order to scare her with the idea of rape, just as uncle shorty ordered it. But, at that moment, it seems like Susan is about to be raped by these three criminals and even one of the women says “I want to watch.” It is not until the end, when these same women are seen talking with ‘uncle shorty’, when the audience knows that Grandi only wanted to scared Susan, so as to incriminate Vargas’ wife for drug possession and murder. One way or another, we as the audience are not sure if Susan was raped or not and maybe this element in the movie is another shade of evil which spills over the good characters of Susan and Vargas to highlight their goodness.

The final scene in which Menzies teams up with Mike Vargas to get Hank’s incriminating confession on tape, is of great importance. For once, this long sequence highlights the brilliant writing skills of Welles. The creativity, fluidity and suspense of the lines spoken by Hank are stellar and build up to the dramatic ending of the movie. It also takes the viewer through a historic timeline given that Hank sees at the beginning of this shot two of his most important friends, Pete and Tana. Hank asks Tana to read him the tarot for which Tana tells him that he has “no future” as a way to foreshadow his ending. Later, when Hanks leaves Tana’s house, Hank accuses Pete of becoming an idealist for partnering up with Mike Vargas. It is important to mention that, Mike and Pete’s partnership contrasts directly with that of Hank and Shorty’s. The first partnership is good and lawful one while that one of Hanks and Shorty is shady, illicit, and evil.

What’s more, the dialogue of Hank is great because he also contemplates what’s around him while being drunk and on his way to death. Hanks realized that the Mexican oil fields are “pumping money” and questions the financial situation of his own life. “Don’t you think I could have been rich? A cop in my position?” With these questions, Hanks shows his immorality, contempt for his profession and, more importantly, his greed for money. Hence, when he dies at the hand of his best friend, Pete, there is a clear justification for this action and the audience don’t feel so bad given his evilness of character.

 

07/17/17

Down Argentine Way (1940): The appropriation of the other’s culture

Down Argentine Way, directed by Irving Cummings, is a declaration and an attempt to seduce the Latin American by creating an Argentine theme movie while misrepresenting their culture. There is a lot of talk in cultural classes about authenticity or the proper representation of other cultures. And, in Down Argentine Way is clear that the director and his team did not make an effort to include actual Argentine music, clothing, or even dancing routines  that could reflect the ‘authentic’ folklore of this nation. It is important to remember that by 1940, the Argentine cinema was well-established in Latin America and movie theaters where all over the capital, so I would imagine that when they saw this movie misrepresenting their country and its traditions (which they saw as a cultural travesty),  pushed to boycott it.

The movie begins with the iconic Carmen Miranda dancing at the tune of a typical tropical ‘Tutti Frutti Hat’ type of song. The appearance of Carmen Miranda marks the tone for which the viewer should identify with this movie about Latin America. Furthermore, Carmen Miranda serves as a cultural homogenizing marker which indicates that all Latin countries are the same and that cultural or geographic specificity doesn’t really matter. Perhaps what really matters in the movie is the pretend good-neighbor policy of integration and cooperation designed by the Americans. This is not to mention that by 1940 the Argentine government (as well as the Brazilian) was being seduced by the Axis forces and the USA saw to change this sphere of influence on their favour. Just like Phil Swanson in his article, “Going Down on Good Neighbours” explains, Down Argentine Way was made to represent glamour and good fortune for some, the content of the film sets South America to be a paradise free of war, while many were suffering and dying everywhere else. Hence, somehow, Down Argentine Way is a historical misrepresentation where Americans can escape from reality and find their own oasis in Argentina (or anywhere else in Latin America) as a way to run away from the calamity of war.

Down Argentine Way also points out to a new era of transatlantic communication and transportation. For instance, in one of the first scenes, the Argentine horses are moved into a cruise ship. The image reads, “Argentine-Pan American Lines” showing a direct way of international maritime transportation route from Buenos Aires to New York. Technology, integration and business all collide in this movie as a way to international integration among the developed North and the developing South. The feud between two families also are also part of the main plot of the movie. The Argentinian family represented by Mr. Quintana and the American Family represented by Ms. Binnie Crawford do not have a good relationship. But at the end of the movie, these two families are reconciled and become good-neighbors which favours the commercial trade among them. Hence, hinting that no matter the differences and difficulties among these two nations (USA and Argentina), a ‘beneficial’ solution can be achieved in the end.

The music and dancing of the movie,  Down Argentine Way,  also symbolizes the misrepresentation and cultural appropriation done by Hollywood. In fact, the Spanish songs are replaced by English ones. The tropical Spanish drums take over Glenda, the main female American character,  as she starts suddenly dancing and even singing in English first and then in Spanish (Language does not need to be learned just felt?). It is like the music possess her and she cannot longer be a rational American woman. Nevertheless, this order is restore when the English band starts singing again and Glenda gets herself together in order to sing again more calmly. There is also another music scene where there is a sort of match-up between the American singing band and a tropical drum Latino band. However, their appearance and placement on the screen shows them in different planes of impotence. The English tuxedo music band is located at the center-top part of the screen while the drum Latin American music band is sitting down at the bottom/feet of the American band. This arrangement servers to illustrate the perception that America is always first: culturally, artistically and even commercially. On the other hand, the idea of the Latin Lover and all the romantic skills that he possess in the movie, represented by the character Ricardo Quintana, also are used as a secret code language to provide access unexplored sexual pleasure in a mutual transaction.  It seems that the Argentinian horses and its men are also equally misinterpreted or word-coded to be of the same caliber. Here, Down Argentine Way makes an animalistic assumption which equal to sexual pleasure (getting yourself a man) could be the same as buying a horse.

Finally, the fiesta celebration that Ricardo and Glenda seem to run into when they are preparing for the horse raising, lacks cultural specificity. This fiesta has more to do with a Mexican celebration than with an Argentine get together. There is no tangos being played here. The clothes of the peasant girls are wrong and the gaucho’s all have the same style costumes. What’s more, when one of the Argentinian girls is dancing frantically in the center of a crowd of people, she gives her place to Binnie Crawford: an American. Somehow the American, represented by Binnie here, take over the Argentinians in their own backyard and displace them. Ms. Crawford then steals the show and takes over their music, dancing, singing, and even their men and horses. In this bilateral commercial transaction, the Americans are the ones who always win and the Argentinians (and for that matter all the Latin Americans) are there as mere fillers who can be convinced or bought easily.

Hence, Down Argentine Way is a clear example and the epitome of misrepresenting other people’s culture expression for your own entertainment and pleasure with little or no consequence. Way to go Hollywood!

07/14/17

Week One: The Man from Acapulco (Le Magnifique): The bending of reality

My first reaction to The Man from Acapulco (Le Magnifique) (1973), directed by Philippe de Broca, was of fantasy meets reality. It is a movie with different layers but those layers, like many other movies, need to be peel with care before they reveal what they have to tell. At first, The Man from Acapulco seems to be a French version of James Bond, charged with many shades of humor and parody against the tropical Mexican landscape. On the other hand, this movie also resembles the Pink Panther because it plays with a clumsy but agile detective, Bob Saint-Clar, a fiction character, who is involved in all of the action scenes which later are explain to be the creation of the other main character: François Merlin, the writer. In a sense, The Man from Acapulco is a movie about the creation of reality based on fantasy. A French writer writes about Acapulco, a place he has never been to, but wishes he could be there in person in order to escape the cosmopolitan city of Paris. Hence, Merlin uses the genre of action and adventure literature to create fictional characters who can travel to remote places (away from civilized France) to solve miseries and to live a more exciting live.

There is something very important about this movie because it explains the power of writing. But beyond creating stories and imagining fictional heroes saving the pretty girl, this movie also showcases the struggles of the creative process of writing itself. Here is where I relate to the movie and to the difficulty of writing something of value. This is not to say that the movie cannot be analyzed in other ways. For instance, one of the elements of the movie, and perhaps an empowering element for Merlin as a writer, is that he becomes some sort of semi-god full of vengeance. Case in point, Merlin punishes or rewards the people who live in his building (Christine) or come to his apartment (Charron, Mrs. Berger, the electrician and the plumber), depending on how his state of mind is at the moment. If the electrician does not fix his cable problem at home, then Merlin makes him an evil villain in his book. Hence, the power of writing and his personal power as a character is to use his talent to create other fictional charters which makes his story line very successful. But the vengeance part does not end in the fictional section of the movie. For example, Merlin also punishes Christine when he thinks she’s been cheating on him with his editor. During this final scene, Merlin’s male ego is hurt so much that he leaves Christine outside of his apartment to sleep on the floor just because he thinks she has betrayed him. Not to mention, the many times Tatiana, the fictional double character of Christine, who suffers multiple violent rapes many times over at the hands of the military as a punishment.

Another element which is important in The Men from Acapulco is the breaking down or failure of the typewriter machine. This event allows the filmmaker to ‘break’ the fantasy/reality continuum of the scene and to tell the viewer there are to different worlds being presented here. One is the the word of reality of Merlin and the other is the fantastic world of Bob Saint-Cla, the action hero. Now, the viewer can identify that Merlin is a writer but not any kind of writer. He is a writer having some issues with money, his flat, his lonely life in Paris, and more importantly, with his instrument of creation: the type writer. Here, the power of creation of the type writer (and now with our computes) gives Merlin the power to imagine other exotic geographies far away from home. In these foreign lands, such as Acapulco, a helicopter can fly over the pyramids of Tenochtitlan and inside them a crazy sacrificial bloodbath type of killing can take place. Hence, the violence and horror is justified in this context of primitivity. Even the theme of his novels are set to be cheesy. Merlin knows his audience and writers for a sex and violence thirsty kind of reader. Nothing wrong with that, but the only thing is that his writing perpetuates certain misconceptions that many French (and perhaps Europeans) people might have of remote place such Mexico.

In the end, The Man from Acapulco was a very funny and entertaining movie. At the beginning, I stated watching with French subtitles on but later and thanks to Jon, I watched it with Portuguese subtitles which made much more sense and allowed me finish watching the movie until the end.

 

 

07/12/17

The Mark of Zorro (1920): The fabrication of freedom and the cultural hero

 

 

 

 

One of the neat things about studying older films such as the Mark of Zorro (1920), a silent romantic film starting Douglas Fairbanks, is that it gives the attentive viewer an opportunity to travel back in time and see the origins of how adventure and heroic movies were made in a time when the movie industry in Hollywood was in its infancy. For instance, this movie allowed Fairbanks to become a much more popular and richer actor than what he already was since its production company, Douglas Fairbanks Picture Corporation, was created then to catapult him into an action figure adored by millions of his loyal audience. Hence, the script of the Mark of Zorro, which was originally published in the magazine “All-Story Weekly”, was based on the story, “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley and adapted into a movie script to suit Fairbank’s athletic skills. All of these background and historical information serves to point out that we as movie critics need to be aware of the purpose and intention when watching a movie.

I talk about intention in movie making just to bring up a subject which sometimes escapes our attention when watching a movie for the first time. Why are movies made and do they challenge the status quo or, on the contrary, reinforce it? In the case of the Mark of Zorro, directed by Fred Niblo, these questions are of great importance given that in 2005 the United States Library of Congress selected this film for preservation in the National Film Registry, giving it the status of “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” (Mike Barnes, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter). With this movie, the Mark of Zorro, the sword fighting devil-may-care adventure hero was born. Seeing the mistreatment of the peons by rich landowners and the oppressive colonial government, Don Diego Vega, son of a wealthy hacendado Don Alejandro, takes the identity of Zorro, a Robyn Hood-like character who makes life miserable for the rich and powerful rulers of old California in the early 19th century and fights off oppression. By definition, Oppression is a “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control” of people, and this is exactly one of the reasons why this movie was made. Audiences back in the 1920s needed new reasons to keep going to see movies and the Mark of Zorro played on the idea of “freedom for all” and “justice of all” type mentality which most Americans adhered to at the time and still do in the present.

Nevertheless, it is important to go further in the exploration of the plot and the main character of the Mark of Zorro and perhaps come to a better understanding of why action movies are so important in the present and the social and cultural implications that movies such as this one leaves in the minds of audiences around the world. The beginning of the movie starts with a screening sing which says, “Oppression by its very nature creates the power that crushes it”. Therefore, while this may have some truth to it, the movie hints directly to the need of the creation of a hero-like person such as Zorro, a within-the-system champion who is the only one who can rise to defend the oppressed of lower rank and status. Zorro, a high-born of Spanish decent and education, does not belong to the lower classes (being these Mexican or American Indians), nor can he be a mestizo (those of mixed Indian and Spanish blood or culture) but only by a Criollo (those of Spanish descend born in the New World) just like Don Diego Vega is.

Hence, the question of freedom from oppression becomes a question of class, culture and social justice which does not include all peoples. The Mark of Zorro (1920) hints first to the independence and then the annexation of California to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), following the defeat of Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Additionally, this movie also points out to the Wars of Independence that many Latin American nations had at the beginning of the 19th century against Spain. One way or another, the newly republics from the very beginning abolished the formal system of radical classification and hierarchy (at least on paper), the Caste-System, the Inquisition and novel titles. Slavery, on the other hand, was not abolished immediately but ended in all the nations within a quarter century. After watching the Mark of Zorro, however, one cannot undeniably come to the conclusion that the movie contains a political message favoring the creation of new nations, as well as the separation of old California from Spanish ruling, were defenders of Oppression such as Don Diego Vega and his alter-ego Zorro, preserve the status-quo by belonging to the Criollo elite at the top of the social hierarchy system.

Within the movie itself, there are a few interesting observations which are important to expand. The main character, the young Don Diego Vega contrasts directly with his heroic alter-ego, Zorro in many ways. First, Diego appears to be a contrasting opposite to Zorro given his apparent disinterest in war, weapons, and sword-fighting. However, it is clear that the viewer would distinguished that this is a cover up by Don Diego to justify the plot. The idea of hombria or manhood is well-established in the movie by contrasting the sword-fighting abilities of Zorro against the soft-handed approach of Don Diego and his liberal education in Spain. The idea of fighting and defending one’s nation is directly linked in the film to virility (the sword is an extension of a man’s manhood’s; in other word his penis is his sword), agility, romance, freedom fighting, nobility of blood (in the case of Don Diego his lineage can be traced back to Spanish blood purity). Then, The Mark of Zorro is a sort of Scarlet Letter for the sinful oppressor and cruel rulers of old California. Hence, the marking of the ‘Z’ by the hand of Zorro on one’s body (or face) is the branding of injustice and the social exclusion and perhaps rejection by the rest of the population whom align with the freedom seeker of the movie. Only when Zorro proves his sword-fighting skills, his ability to get the girl (a returning theme within action movies), his unmatched athleticism, and most important of all, his purity of blood by demonstrating to all the other Caballeros his Spanish lineage, is only when Zorro is allowed to become the leader of the revolt against the Governor and gain independence against the colonial Spanish ruling.

As a side note, and not less important than the analysis of the main character Zorro, the character of Lolita Pulido (Marguerite de la Motte), a typical damsel in distress, does not challenge the stereotypical female role of the time and instead conforms to getting married to the rich guy and please her parents. In the movie, there is a scene in which Lolita seems to be waiting in the living room of Diego’s town house with a book in her hand, and she does not read it but only flips through the pages of the book while waiting patiently for her hero to appear. For this reason and many others, Lolita Pulido represents the typical female supporting role which only exists in these types of movies to fulfill the role of the principal male character and which is very important in the eyes of the audience. When Captain Ramon says, “Beauty should not be cruel”, he is saying, women should not be aggressive, nor fight for their rights or defend themselves against aggression. Hence, leaving the role of rescuer, hero and saviour to only Zorro.

07/11/17

Hello world!

Hi there,

I’m Nayid and this semester I will try to give my personal and academic opinion about the different movies that our class, “Hollywood South of the Border”, has for us this semester.

I will be focusing on exploring how these movies were made: contextualization, the director’s intention: message and the way the main characters are portrait in them: representation and stereotypes.

I’m also excited about reading  everyone’s blogs and made some diligent contributions by writing  reviews which perhaps would help expand the conversation much further.

As a side note, Latin American Cine, just like its people and its territory, is very varied so this in itself will give me a lot material to work with. so, I’m ready to get cracking.

See you in class guys.

Nayid