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The young Godard included it alongside Russian rousers in his Cahiers salvo "Towards a Political Cinema," and indeed Eisenstein is the foundation of Emilio Fernández's frescoes, where historical monuments have voices of their own. The peasant-heroine (María Félix) is a teacher, ailing yet iron-willed, posed before the dwarfing Diego Rivera murals lining the governmental palace. The new president calls for the people's help, the venerated silhouette gives la maestra her mission ("Mexico needs water") and the tear rolling down her cheek sparkles like a diamond. A history of struggle, a country in crisis visualized as pale flatlands with a single cactus on the edge of the screen, the ground cut off to frame the tiny figure against enormous clouds. Her destination is Río Escondido, a pueblo reduced to gnarled trees, scattered graves and crumbling colonial architecture, the ruthless landowner (Carlos López Moctezuma) runs it like his private saloon. Ignorance and its "impenetrable bondage," misery and disease, Félix, a doctor (Fernando Fernández) and a priest (Agustín Isunza) form a regenerative trio. The classroom is a stable, once restored it proudly showcases Juárez's portrait next to the blackboard—surely the facing-the-camera didacticism of a dolled-up movie star filibustering to children struck the future cinéaste of Le Gai Savoir. The despot wants this politicized Madonna as his mistress, rejected he guns down the little boy who tries to get water from his well, the ensuing melodrama has the teacher return fire like La Davis in The Letter. (The technique is concurrent with Huston's, and is absorbed by Kazan.) Insurrection, "sometimes a little barbarism is necessary," the president has the last word. A government pamphlet, though one carved by Fernández out of jagged rock, striking faces, and Gabriel Figueroa's sheltering skies. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |