Mexican Cinema

Abstract

Mexico has had a successful national film industry since its inception, with some peaks and troughs. One of the peaks generally labeled as the Golden Age (edad de oro) of Mexican cinema lasted approximately from the 1930s to the 1950s. While the precise dates are subject to debate, there is general agreement that it was highly productive. Studios modeled after those in the United States and supported by generous government funding through a film bank, made hundreds of films. The short turnover in production frequently led to repetition in narrative, wardrobe, character, set, and technical style. This means of production was cheap and, because film was a popular form of entertainment in Mexico and elsewhere, it was lucrative. The studios went into decline in the 1960s with the arrival of television, changes in audience tastes, diminishing government support, and the opening of the first film schools and their associated film societies. During this period, B-movies flourished while art cinema had a strong run in production terms and critical praise, if not in audience attendance figures. The 1980s saw an overall decline in filmmaking in volume and was variable in quality, and this pattern continued for many years. Mexican film criticism as it evolved inside and outside of the academy grew out of a period of change in the 1960s and has remained consistently and primarily focused on historical and contextual analysis. The year 1992 was a major turning point for the attention given to Mexican cinema, most particularly outside of Mexico. The considerable box office success of Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Arau) in that year led to more focused academic interest from abroad. This attention has subsequently multiplied exponentially with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores perros (2000) breakthrough hit, his move to transnational filmmaking, and the international successes of others such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Carlos Reygadas. The field has grown globally with critics both inside and outside of Mexico energized by this international and transnational focus. In the early twenty-first century, there is a curious confluence of apparently contradictory elements at play whereby Mexican filmmaking has gone from one of its lowest points of production in terms of volume, while it is garnering significant international scholarly and popular attention through the film festival and awards circuit and strong local audiences for popular genre films that get limited distribution outside of the Americas. This annotated bibliography cannot prove to be exhaustive but should provide pointers to useful exemplary texts for those wanting to gain an understanding of Mexican film.