Search results
From 1943 until 1950, Emilio Fernández was regarded as one of the foremost purveyors of 'Mexicanness,' as one of the most important filmmakers of the Mexican film industry. This book explores the contradictions of post-Revolutionary representation as manifested in Fernández' canonical 1940s films: María Candelaria, Víctimas del pecado, Las abandonadas, La perla, Enamorada, Río Escondido, Maclovia and Salón Mexico. It examines transnational influences that shaped Fernández' work. The book acknowledges how the events of the Mexican revolution impacted on the country's film industry and the ideological development of nationalism. It takes note of current tendencies in film studies and postcolonial theory to look for the excesses, instabilities and incoherencies in texts, which challenge such totalizing projects of hegemony or cultural reification as 'cultural nationalism' or ' mexicanidad.' The book looks at how classical Mexican cinema has been studied, surveying the US studies of classical Mexican cinema which diverge from Mexican analyses by making space for the 'other' through genre and textual analyses. Fernández's Golden Age lasted for seven years, 1943-1950. The book also examines how the concept of hybridity mediates the post-Revolutionary discourse of indigenismo (indigenism) in its cinematic form. It looks specifically at how malinchismo, which is also figured as a 'positive, valorisation of whiteness,' threatens the 'purity' of an essential Mexican in María Candelaria, Emilio Fernández's most famous indigenist film. Emilio Fernandez's Enamorada deals with the Revolution's renegotiation of gender identity.
: 276) in María Candelaria (1943), Fernández’ most famous indigenist film. Indigenismo argues that the roots of modern Mexican identity lie in the cultural legacy of its pre-Colombian Indian cultures. In the immediate post-Revolutionary period (1920–40), indigenismo provided Mexico with a ‘myth of origins’ which conveniently elided its colonial past and provided a notion of national identity and a
revealed in Fernández’ indigenist films María Candelaria (1943), Maclovia (1948) and La perla (1945). In the case of María Candelaria it argues that the representation of the indigenous subject is predicated on a pre- as well as post-Revolutionary racial ideology that comes not just from a residual European influence but also from Hollywood. Chapters 4 and 5 analyse the concept of gender in Fernández and how it pertains
his racial/social origins: ‘I knew perfectly well that they would never give me the chance to direct. It was very difficult. They were already here: the intellectuals, the college graduates, the sons of millionaires’ (Tuñón, 1995 : 181). Tuñón argues that this sense of isolation becomes the primal drama reenacted throughout his oeuvre. Fernández’ indigenist films María Candelaria (1943), Maclovia (1948) and La perla