Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920-1960 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920–1960 Andrea Comiskey (bio) Rogelio Agrasánchez Jr., Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006. $45.00. Between the late 1930s and the early 1950s the Mexican film industry rose from relative obscurity to become a major force in world cinema, one that posed a formidable threat to Hollywood's domination of Latin American screens. Scholarly attention to this underexplored but rich national cinema has, fortunately, increased since the 1990s; recent publications on the subject include Joanna Hershfield and David Maciel's Mexico's Cinema, an updated edition of Carl J. Mora's exhaustive Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, and Doyle Greene's Mexploitation Cinema. Adding to this literature is a new study by archivist Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr., who examines the distribution, exhibition, and reception of Mexican films across the border in Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920–1960. Agrasánchez suggests that his work fills two voids in existing scholarship, one regarding the leisure habits of Latin American immigrant communities and the other concerning consumption of Spanish-language films—a remarkable 90 percent of which have been Mexican—in the United States. Records indicate numerous instances of the U.S. exhibition of Mexican films during the silent era. Agrasánchez contends, however, that the regular, large-scale exportation of Mexican films became commercially viable only after the coming of sound, which created a demand among Latin American immigrant communities (composed primarily of Mexicans but also of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others) for movies in their native language. The Hollywood majors' limited efforts to court this marginal market through Spanish-language film production were poorly received, thus creating a niche for imported films. By the late 1930s the rapidly maturing Mexican film industry was poised to fill this niche. Agrasánchez's study focuses on the so-called golden age of Mexican film from the late 1930s through the early 1950s, which was characterized by the rise of a strong star system and popular genres such as the ranchera musical and the cabaretera. He relies primarily on the records of Clasa-Mohme, one of two major distributors of Mexican films in the United States prior to Columbia Pictures' entry into the market in 1957, providing case studies of six regions that the agency served: Los Angeles, Pomona Valley, New York City, El Paso, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley. Agrasánchez identifies the unique attributes of each case study site and their implications for local Spanish-language film exhibition. However, the major trends he finds seem to have obtained nationwide. This consistency in distribution and exhibition practices across regions paints a cohesive and textured picture of the contexts in which Mexican films appeared in the United States and their position within immigrant communities. In particular, Agrasánchez's examination of Clasa-Mohme's operations adds nuance to the standard view of distributor-exhibitor relations in the studio era. He notes that "exhibitors lined up at the doors of suppliers of Mexican films" (11) when they became aware of the untapped immigrant market. However, he also emphasizes the active role that Clasa-Mohme and Azteca, the other major distributor, played in cultivating an alternative network for showing Mexican films, citing the subsidies they offered for [End Page 91] theater startup and the typically favorable and negotiable terms of their contracts with exhibitors. The records of Clasa-Mohme further indicate that, by the late 1940s, a highly competitive, small-scale system of runs, zones, and clearances had developed among the dynastically controlled theaters, often integrated into circuits, that specialized in Spanish-language films. It mirrored but remained largely outside of mainstream American film distribution and exhibition. With this marginal system emerged an alternative and apparently highly effective mode of evading censorship pressures, that is, dealing with the dilemma on an exhibitor-by-exhibitor basis. The apex of the exhibition of Mexican films in the United States occurred around 1951, according to Agrasánchez. His research (compiled in tables in...