On Wednesday, June 20, 2012, at 8pm, the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles will screen Los Tres
Mosqueteros (The Three Musketeers, 1942), directed by Miguel M. Delgado, with
Cantinflas (139 minutes). As part of the L.A. Conservancy series "Last Remaining Seats", the film will be shown at the magnificently restored Million Dollar Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.
Below are the program notes I wrote for the event.
Los Tres
Mosqueteros spoofs the beloved historical novel by Alexander Dumas. Comic legend Mario Moreno, “Cantinflas”,
stars as the street savvy Mexican proletarian emerging in a dream as the
dashing d’Artagnan in17th century France.
Like Germán Valdez, “Tin Tan”, and Niní Marshall,
“Catita”, Mario Moreno “Cantinflas” belongs to the pantheon of great Latin
American comedians of the forties and fifties who brought a unique comic
persona to the screen. Their humor
blends slapstick and linguistic mannerisms, thrives on parody and excels in the
sharp portrait of popular characters.
They use film as a vehicle for amiable social satire, a mirror that reflects
shared national traits, anchored in the perspective of the common people.
Born in the working-class neighborhood of Tepito, Mexico
City, in 1911, Mario Moreno honed his comic persona performing in ‘carpa’, or
tent, vaudeville shows. He combined physical comedy with a knack for verbal
improvisation, and a studied nonchalance when his sentimentalized low-life
characters had to face the powerful, the rich, the bureaucrats.
Mario Moreno once defined “Cantinflas” as ‘the prototype
of the humble people from the urban barrio … superficially educated and
practically non-existent socially, but with a highly developed ingenuity (a
Mexican characteristic), a formidable astuteness – and a large and open
heart”. In fifty films over forty years
Moreno offers variations on this prototype: the little man who is perennially
broke, a ‘pelado’ (literally, without hair, stripped clean) pushed by poverty
to be a jack-of-all-trades, resilient and witty facing the catastrophes of
life. His pants hang off his hips, he sports a pencil-thin moustache, a raggedy
hat and has no sense of style.
A trademark of “Cantinflas” is his unique type of
nonsense speech, mixing double-talk, alliterations, malapropisms, highfalutin
affectation and pantomime delivered at breakneck speed and
incomprehensible. The Real Academia
Española de la Lengua incorporated “cantinflada” as a noun in its venerable
dictionary.
Intellectuals and academic have examined the popularity
of “Cantinflas” and his endearing qualities in studies that discuss him as a
metaphor for the chaos of Mexican modernity in the 20th
century. In the words of cultural
historian Ilan Stavans “Cantinflas” is an example of the “delightful if
tortuous relationship between a Europeanized elite and the hybrid masses in a
continent … imprisoned in the labyrinth of identity”.
Audiences, then and today, may sense these social dislocations
when they see a “Cantinflas” film – a staple of Spanish-language television - but
what they will most experience is a breath of fresh air and the impulse to
laugh heartily at the adventures of an unforgettable character.
All this will be nicely evident in The Three Musketeers, an affectionate parody not only of a beloved
literary classic but of the lavish costume dramas favored by Hollywood in the
1940s, with the Spanish theater of the Golden Age thrown in the mix. The adaptation excels in the hilarious
treatment of speech, a systematic counterpoint between a Siglo de Oro
parsimonious delivery– as if the actors were performing in a play by Calderón o
Lope de Vega – and the Mexican slang of “Cantinflas” spitted out at breakneck
speed. In one funny scene, the devious
cardinal Richeliu is carefully modulating a speech on love and d’Artagnan
interrupts him with a pun on love and car mufflers, untranslatable in English:
“que el amor puro … que el amor diáfano … que el amor …amortiguador … qué pasa
con el amor?”
The plotline is simple: in a working class cabaret
“Cantinflas” retrieves the necklace stolen from a beautiful actress, who
invites him to the studio where she stars in a costume drama. Mistaken for an extra, the unruly
“Cantinflas” creates havoc on the set.
Quarantined in the star’s dressing room, he falls asleep and dreams he
is d’Artagnan. The story follows the
main events of the novel: the young swordsman from Gascogne meets the seasoned
musketeers of the King’s guard, and very soon – “one for all, all for one” –
gets commissioned by the Queen to retrieve a missing necklace from
England. The mission is fulfilled on
time for “Cantinflas” to wake up, late at night; the only ones left are his
three faithful friends, true musketeers with whom he goes off in search of new
adventures. They are as materially
deprived as in the beginning, but immensely enriched by a life of dreams and
imagination.
This clever linguistic contrast between speech cadence
and delivery styles, and the clash of old-fashioned and modern (even invented) Spanish grammatical forms
were ratcheted up a notch in the comedian’s following film, Romeo y Julieta (1943). In this spoof, a tragedy is given a comedic
twist, and the dialogue of the play inside the film is written in verse.
Another source of comedy is the recurrent use of the
antiquated personal pronoun ‘Vos’ (Thou) and its corresponding verbal
conjugation (ending in ‘áis’ or ‘éis’) made to rime with the modern day ‘Tú’
(You) and, to top it, an invented
conjugation. Anachronism is
further milked for comic effect with the use of the ‘ranchera’ songs.
With this screening of Los Tres Mosqueteros the Latin American Cinemateca wants to toast
Mario Moreno “Cantinflas” on his centennial, and celebrate once more a comedic
genius who embodies the exuberant sentimentality of life in Latin America.
Essential
filmography
Ahí está el detalle (1940)
Ni sangre ni arena (1941)
Los Tres Mosqueteros (1942)
Romeo y Julieta (1943)
Gran hotel (1944)
Un día con el diablo (1945)
El siete machos (1950)
Si yo fuera diputado (1951)
Abajo el telón (1954)
El bolero de Raquel (1956)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Pepe (1960)
El extra (1962)
Don Quijote sin mancha (1969)
El patrullero 777 (1978)
Some books on “Cantinflas”
Carl Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society
1896-1980 (1982)
Jeffrey Pilcher, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican
Modernity (2001)
Ilan Stavans, The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on
Hispanic Popular Culture (1998)
