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In the Times of Don Porfirio

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In the Times of Don Porfirio
DVD cover
Directed byJuan Bustillo Oro
Written byHumberto Gómez Landero
Juan Bustillo Oro
Produced byJesús Grovas
StarringFernando Soler
Marina Tamayo
Emilio Tuero
CinematographyJack Draper
Edited byMario González
Music byMax Urban
Production
company
Oro Films
Distributed byTelevisa
Release date
  • 4 April 1940 (1940-04-04)
Running time
160 minutes
CountryMexico
LanguageSpanish

In the Times of Don Porfirio (Spanish: En tiempos de Don Porfirio) is a 1939 Mexican musical film directed by Juan Bustillo Oro and starring Fernando Soler, Marina Tamayo, Emilio Tuero and Joaquín Pardavé.[1] The film, adapted from a novel, nostalgically portrays the government of General and President Porfirio Díaz, who is played by Antonio R. Frausto, who played him in several films. The film was the highest-grossing Mexican film of the year.

Cast

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Release and reception

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The film was the highest-grossing Mexican film in its year of release at the box office. The author Carl J. Mora wrote that "the nostalgia it evoked of a simpler and more peaceful epoch could also be interpreted as a rejection by the middle class of the more socialistic aspects of the Revolution. The appearance in the film of such popular actors as Fernando Soler, the Spanish immigrant Emilio Tuero, and the fine comic actor Joaquín Pardavé were also potent factors in the movie's success.[2] In their book Culture and Customs of Mexico - Peter Standish and Steven M. Bell describe the film as a "political extreme", in that the "film's nostalgia for the stable hierarchies of pre-Revolutionary days arguably provided some comfort to the sectors of society that felt threatened by the Cardenas government's land redistribution and nationalization programmes".[3] Colin Gunckel, Jan-Christopher Horak and Lisa Jarvinen described the film as a "political revista that utilized zarzuela melodies popular during the Porfiriato".[4] Jacqueline Avila compared it to Mexico de mis recuerdos (1944), describing them as "two noteworthy films that intertwine musical performances in the narratives and expose the social contradictions of Porfirian culture, particularly concerning women's roles".[5]

References

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  1. ^ Segre p.89
  2. ^ Mora, Carl J. (2015). Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004. McFarland. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-7864-9187-2.
  3. ^ Standish, Peter; Bell, Stephen M. (2004). Culture and customs of Mexico. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-30412-5.
  4. ^ Gunckel, Colin; Horak, Jan-Christopher; Jarvinen, Lisa, eds. (2019). Cinema between Latin America and Los Angeles: Origins to 1960. Rutgers University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-9788-0126-4.
  5. ^ AVILA, JACQUELINE. "México de Mis Inventos: Salon Music, Lyric Theater, and Nostalgia in 'Cine de Añoranza Porfiriana.'" Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, vol. 38, no. 1, University of Texas Press, 2017, pp. 1–27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44862442.

Bibliography

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  • Segre, Erica. Intersected Identities: Strategies of Visualisation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Mexican Culture. Berghahn Books, 2007.
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