Gran Hotel

This is probably the best Cantinflas movie ever. Not only because at that time both Mario Moreno the actor and Cantinflas the character had the required maturity but also the needed freshness to successfully develop comedic plots, as well as production values, and the quality of the script.

It is a fine comedy, whose gags are, to some extent, hard to get for non-native Spanish speakers, because of the very nature of Cantinflas, whose charm depended heavily in complex but meaningless word games that express but the ability of the "regular Joe" to deal with issues, as well as the tensions within Mexican society during the years of the economic expansion brought by the second World War.

Before Cantinflas became a priest, a doctor, a teacher, a diplomat or flew in a balloon with David Niven in color and cinemascope, there was a real Cantinflas. And this gem of comedy proves it, here he still plays that surreal hero with whom we all sympathize and identified with. Perhaps one of his best scenes to prove this is when, full of tears, he confesses that first of all he is a macho, and as such, he rather keep on suffering like a man, because he is not working, than get a job and go to work. So here he is, trying to get a job, trying to like it and trying (not too hard) to keep it. And in the end the hero tramp (like you know who) gets away with practically everything, except a steady job. At this time he was already so popular that they (censorship, government, macarthism?) thought he was a bad influence for the kids (the same kids that adored him) so they advised him to change his image (they sort of made him an offer he couldn't refuse). So, a few years after, he became a senator ("Si yo fuera diputado") in a movie he wrote himself. It was very well known then, that the movie was stripped of at least 25 minutes of footage, most of it when he was delivering a political speech. And by the time he became a diplomat ("Su excelencia"), his image was totally changed, just like his face. Maybe it was the same censorship that made another great comedian seek refuge in Switzerland. but that is another(?) story. Nevertheless "Gran Hotel" is Cantinflas at his best, as all his 40's and early 50's b/w movies.