Cielito lindo

"Cielito Lindo" (1936) was the debut film of Mexican Roberto Gavaldón, who became one of the most important filmmakers in his country, and Canadian Robert Quigley, who metamorphosed his name to Roberto O'Quigley and stayed in Mexico, where he directed other five movies, wrote screenplays for Emilio "Indio" Fernández and Alejandro Galindo, and worked once again with Gavaldón, co-writing the script for the fierce rural drama "Rosauro Castro".

In their first film behind the camera, Quigley and Gavaldón surprised me by the agility with which they carry out the movie, with fast and precise cuts and conclusive ellipsis that advance the story they had to tell in 80 minutes, and that prevent us from thinking that it is a romantic melodrama that we have previously seen many times, with variations and in all national cinemas, here enhanced by the epic tone as the trio of lovers has the Mexican revolution as background.

The film, scripted by "Indio" Fernández, Íñigo de Martino and Quigley, from a screen story by Ernesto Cortázar, tells the story of two good friends who fight together for the revolutionary cause in Mexico in the early twentieth century. Felipe Vélez (Arturo de Córdova) and José Orozco (bullfighter Pepe Ortiz) fall in love, under different circumstances, with the same woman, the landowner Lupita Villasante (Lupita Gallardo, Ortiz's wife in real life).

The plot has quite a few reversals of fortune, from the first sequence, in which Felipe is about to be executed by a fire squad and Pepe saves him at the last moment, and similar situations will be repeated throughout the film. The sentimentality is fairly well dosed, the few shots of war are tightly edited, giving us a panorama of desolation and death that leads to the tragic ending. As the first work of two talents that would flourish over the years, "Cielito Lindo" was a good calling card.