The female image has been an ambiguous one in Mexican culture, and the place of women in Mexican cinema is no less tenuous--yielding in the films of Luis Buñuel and others a range of characterizations from virgin to whore, mother to femme fatale. Mexican Cinema/Mexican Woman, 1940-1950 examines a singular moment in the history of Mexican film to investigate the ways in which the cinematic figures of woman functioned to mediate narrative and social debates. The book raises new questions about the relations between woman and cinema. It will have broad appeal among students and scholars of film, feminist studies, and Latin American studies, as well as those interested in the popular culture of Mexico. Considering the historical and cultural representations of sexual difference as well as race and class, Hershfield closely examines the portrayal of women and gender identity in six films: María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943), Río Escondido (Emilio Fernández, 1947), Distinto amanecer (Julio Bracho, 1943), Salón México (Emilio Fernández, 1948), Doña Bárbara (Fernando de Fuentes, 1943), and Susana (Carne y demonio) (Luis Buñuel, 1950).

"Arranged chronologically, this updated and revised edition covers the scope of Mexican cinema. The main films and their directors are discussed, together with the political, social and economic context of the times. Appendices offer selected filmographies and useful addresses"--Provided by publisher.

How were femininity and motherhood understood in Mexican cinema from the 1940s to the early 1990s? Film analysis, interviews with filmmakers, academic articles and film reviews from newspapers are used to answer the question and trace the changes in such depictions. Images of mothers in films by so-called third-wave filmmakers (Busi Cortes, Maria Novaro, Dana Rotberg and Marisa Sistach) are contrasted with those in Mexican classical films (1935-1950) and films from the 1970s and 1980s. There are some surprising conclusions. The most important restrictions in the depiction of mothers in classical cinema came not from the strict sexual norms of the 1940s but in reactions to women shown as having autonomous identities. Also, in contrast to classical films, third-wave films show a woman's problems within a social dimension, making motherhood political--in relation not to militancy within the left but to women's issues. Third-wave films approach the problems of Latin American society as those of individuals differentiated by gender, sexuality and ethnicity; in such films mothers are citizens directly affected by laws, economic policies and cultural beliefs.

The purpose of this edited volume is to explore the contributions of women to European, Mexican, American and Indian film industries during the years 1900 to 1950, an important period that signified the rise and consolidation of media technologies. Their pioneering work as film stars, writers, directors, designers and producers as well as their endeavors to bridge the gap between the avant-garde and mass culture are significant aspects of this collection. This intersection will be carefully nuanced through their cinematographic production, performances and artistic creations. Other distinctive features pertain to the interconnection of gender roles and moral values with ways of looking, which paves the way for realigning social and aesthetic conventions of femininity. Based on this thematic and diverse sociocultural context, this study has an international scope, their main audiences being scholars and graduate students that pursue to advance interdisciplinary research in the field of feminist theory, film, gender, media and avant-garde studies. Likewise, historians, art and literature specialists will find the content appealing to the degree that intermedial and cross-cultural approaches are presented.

The White Indians of Mexican Cinema theorizes the development of a unique form of racial masquerade—the representation of Whiteness as Indigeneity—during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, from the 1930s to the 1950s. Adopting a broad decolonial perspective while remaining grounded in the history of local racial categories, Mónica García Blizzard argues that this trope works to reconcile two divergent discourses about race in postrevolutionary Mexico: the government-sponsored celebration of Indigeneity and mestizaje (or the process of interracial and intercultural mixing), on the one hand, and the idealization of Whiteness, on the other. Close readings of twenty films and primary source material illustrate how Mexican cinema has mediated race, especially in relation to gender, in ways that project national specificity, but also reproduce racist tendencies with respect to beauty, desire, and protagonism that survive to this day. This sweeping survey illuminates how Golden Age films produced diverse, even contradictory messages about the place of Indigeneity in the national culture. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: https://www.openmonographs.org/. It can also be found in the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/7153

From the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Mexican cinema became the most successful Latin American cinema and the leading Spanish-language film industry in the world. Many Cine de Oro (Golden Age cinema) films adhered to the dominant Hollywood model, but a small yet formidable filmmaking faction rejected Hollywood’s paradigm outright. Directors Fernando de Fuentes, Emilio Fernández, Luis Buñuel, Juan Bustillo Oro, Adolfo Best Maugard, and Julio Bracho sought to create a unique national cinema that, through the stories it told and the ways it told them, was wholly Mexican. The Classical Mexican Cinema traces the emergence and evolution of this Mexican cinematic aesthetic, a distinctive film form designed to express lo mexicano. Charles Ramírez Berg begins by locating the classical style’s pre-cinematic roots in the work of popular Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada at the turn of the twentieth century. He also looks at the dawning of Mexican classicism in the poetics of Enrique Rosas’ El Automóvil Gris, the crowning achievement of Mexico’s silent filmmaking era and the film that set the stage for the Golden Age films. Berg then analyzes mature examples of classical Mexican filmmaking by the predominant Golden Age auteurs of three successive decades. Drawing on neoformalism and neoauteurism within a cultural studies framework, he brilliantly reveals how the poetics of Classical Mexican Cinema deviated from the formal norms of the Golden Age to express a uniquely Mexican sensibility thematically, stylistically, and ideologically.