Mexican Films: Their Past and Their Future

Abstract

IN MEXICO, there is something about the way the light falls, about those immense sweeps of desert and the bald mountains shaped like the landscapes of another planet, about the cactus leaves made liquid by reflections, the photogenic hats, serapes, rebozos, the donkeys punctuating the loneliness, that has always, since before Eisenstein, attracted the film director and the cameraman. Indeed, by right of initiative, if not by ownership of the dollars to follow up the initiative, the true birthplace of the cinema industry might have been Mexico; and Hollywood might have been established not in California but on the High Plateau. In the early days of the camera when the French brothers Lumiere were experimenting with moving pictures, a young Mexican named Salvador Toscano Barragain, attracted by an advertisement, wrote to Paris and acquired a combination cameraprojector (he had to sacrifice his stamp collection to pay the duty), with which he began to exhibit newsreels and shorts imported from Europe. A flair for showmanship brought him a good profit and allowed him to make his own local newsreels as well. Yet