Mitchum, Mexico and the Good Neighbours Era by White Liam;

Author:White, Liam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Robert Mitchum, Dolores del Rio, Hollywood, Mexico, Latin America, film history, Out of the Past, The Big Steal, Emilio Fernandez, Gabriel Figueroa, John Steinbeck, film noir
ISBN: 1637175
Publisher: Andrews UK Ltd.
Published: 2014-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

34 ibid, p.100.

35 ibid, p.106.

36 Hirsch, 1981, pp.163-164.

37 Simpson (ed.), 2001 p.187.

38 Mayer and McDonnell, 2007, pp.287-288.

39 Borde and Chaumeton, 2002, p.5.

40 MacDonald, 1995, p26-27, 171.

41 Server, 2001, p.290.

Chapter 6: “Immaculate Integrity Through an Eloquent Camera”

Steinbeck, Fernández and The Pearl

“Immaculate integrity through an eloquent camera”: this is how the New York Times cinema critic greeted the US premier of The Pearl early in 1948. “The Pearl is no glamour picture for the popcorn and bubblegum trade,” Bosley Crowther continues, “nor is it a genial entertainment for the tired business man’s night out. It is a stern, bitter, brutal and fatalistic dramatization of a tragic folk tale, bleak in its ultimate conclusions about the enslavement of underprivileged man. And although it is richly rewarding, pictorially and dramatically, to the aesthetic sense, it is likely to leave the emotions exhausted and depressed.”[42] In other words, this was not a trivial, frivolous film: this was serious; this was demanding; this was art.

The Pearl was directed in Mexico by Emilio Fernández, photographed by Gabriel Figueroa and starred Pedro Armendáriz - three of the four names most associated with Mexican cinema’s breakthrough in 1943 and 1944. It dealt with an indigenous fishing community, was filmed on location on the west coast of Mexico and at Churubusco studios in the capital, and the cast and crew were almost all Mexican. Yet, right at the very beginning of the film, the title screen announces: “RKO Radio Pictures presents ... The original story by John Steinbeck ...” Not just a Mexican film, then, but one produced by a big Hollywood studio, and written by a major US novelist.

RKO had invested significant funds in the Mexican film industry, but this bi-national production was about more than just a return on their outlay. This was about kudos, and was the first time a major US studio had engaged foreign filmmakers of such status in their native country. Previously, all the talent - from F W Murnau to Jean Renoir to Alfred Hitchcock - had had to go to Hollywood. Now Hollywood was prepared to use its money to expose the cinematic cream of Mexico to a wider audience. To maximize that audience, the film was made simultaneously in English and Spanish. But it is Steinbeck’s name at the top of the credits that gives The Pearl (La Perla in its Spanish version) the prestige, the required gravitas, for RKO to present Mexican cinema to the world’s discerning cinemagoers.

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