PRESENTED IN CONJUNCTION
WITH EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO EXHIBITION
***
A tribute to the great Mexican cinematographer GABRIEL FIGUEROA (1907-1997) will run at Film Forum from Friday, June 5 through Thursday, June 18.
The two-week, 19-film retrospective is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “UNDER THE MEXICAN SKY: GABRIEL FIGUEROA – ART AND FILM,” now on view at El Museo del Barrio (1230 Fifth Avenue at 104 Street) through June 27.
Other national cinemas like Italy and Japan had a Big Three, but they were always directors. Mexico alone had a Big Four: stars Pedro Armendáriz and Dolores del Río, director Emilio Fernández, and Director of Photography Figueroa. Influenced by Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva México!, and taught byCitizen Kane’s Gregg Toland, Figueroa worked with every luminary at home — including directors Fernández, Roberto Gavaldón, and Luis Buñuel— and internationally with John Huston, John Ford, Don Siegel, and Clint Eastwood. Often counted as Mexico’s fourth great muralist along with Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco, Figueroa was nominated for the Ariel Award (Mexico’s Oscars) for Best Cinematography every year from 1946 to 1954, 11 nominations overall, winning 7 times (once against himself). No cameraman has ever dominated a national cinema as he did or created so majestic and instantly recognizable an image of it.
The series kicks off June 5 with Enamorada, often called “the Gone with the Wind of Mexican cinema.” A “deliriously romantic re-working ofThe Taming of the Shrew” (Time Out) set during the Mexican Revolution, it stars Armendáriz as a general who starts to shake down the rich after taking the town of Cholul, but then falls for a staunch conservative’s spitfire daughter, played by Mexican diva María Félix. Enamorada swept the Ariels, winning for Best Film, Director, Actress, Editing, and Figueroa’s cinematography.
Among the many highlights in the series are Figueroa’s collaborations with director Emilio Fernández, including:
- Wildflower, the first collaboration of the “Big Four,” with Armendáriz as a landowner who makes a desperate sacrifice for the love of idealistic peasant girl del Río.
- ·Victims of Sin, the Film Noir soap opera musical starring Cuban rumba legend Ninón Sevilla. The screening will be introduced by Eddie Muller, author and founder of Film Noir Foundation.
- ·María Candelaria, the co-Grand Prize winner and Best Cinematography prize to Figueroa at Cannes, starring Armendáriz and del Río in the title role.
- ·Salón México, with Marga López sexily dancing up a storm to support her younger sister.
- ·The Pearl, based on the John Steinbeck novel and shot by Figueroa on Mexico’s Pacific coast, with Armendáriz as a down-on-his-luck diver who happens upon the biggest pearl he’s ever seen.
- Pueblerina, the last of Fernández’ films about village life.
- Río Escondido, starring Félix as a dedicated schoolteacher who faces a rape attempt, shooting and peasant revolt as she fights to bring education to a remote Mexican village.
Figueroa’s prolific international work is represented as well, including John Ford’s The Fugitive, starring Henry Fonda as the last priest in an anti-clerical state pursued by Armendáriz’s nationalistic priest killer - one of Ford’s personal favorites; Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine on the run in Don Seigel’s Two Mules for Sister Sara; and two by John Huston: Under the Volcano, with Albert Finney, and The Night of the Iguana, Figueroa’s only Oscar nomination, photographed in Puerto Vallarta with Richard Burton as the object of desire for Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon.
The festival also includes Buñuel masterworks Los Olvidados and Nazarín; Mexican Film Noir Another Dawn; Pedro Páramo, starring half-Mexican Psychostar John Gavin (later the U.S. ambassador to Mexico); and three films directed by the great Roberto Gavaldón: Autumn Days, Rosa Blanca(based on a novel by Treasure of the Sierra Madreauthor B. Traven), and Macario, the first Mexican film ever to be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
All films will be screened in 35mm (except María Candelaria, which will be shown in 16mm).
The GABRIEL FIGUEROA retrospective is presented in association with FUNDACIÓN TELEVISA, EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO, CINEMA TROPICAL, and THE MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK, with the support of FILMOTECA DE LA UNAM, THE MEXICAN AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION, and the CONSULATE GENERAL OF MEXICO IN NEW YORK.
