Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Advertising for Pancho Villa en
Columbus
4 From an interview with Mr. Mariano
de la Torre, recorded by Gregorio
Rocha in El Paso, TX. June, 2001.
5 There is an excellent study of the
role of women in early American films
in Benjamin Singer´s Melodrama and
Modernity. Indiana University Press.
2001.
6 It is important to mention that
William Randolph Hearst owned
enormous tract of land and large
numbers of cattle in the state of
Chihuahua. By 1917, when Patria was
released, Pancho Villa had already
seized Hearst´s cattle and distributed
it among the peons. The contents of
Patria were so offensive to Mexico,
that President Woodrow Wilson
ordered Hearst´s film company to
remove all signs in the film that
referred directly to Mexico. Ever since
1914, Hearst had heralded an
American armed intervention in
Mexico.
7 Félix and Edmundo Padilla´s notes
were written in a logbook, preserved
by the Padilla Familly. This logbook
has been a helpful tool in
reconstructing the history of the
different versions of La Venganza de
Pancho Villa.
historical events that shaped the United States and Mexico´s
hazardous border in that era. The attack on Columbus, New Mexico; the
Santa Isabel incident where 16 American engineers were slaughtered;
and the little known event of the Battle of Ojos Azules, when
Pershing´s expedition unsuccessfully confronted Villista soldiers.
But perhaps the best example of Padilla´s method is
an amazingly edited denunciation of the 1914
American invasion of Veracruz, where he inter-cuts
scenes from Birth of a Nation, 1914; naval battle
newsreels from World War I; Liberty, 1916 and The Life
of Villa, 1914; to contest American representations of
the other, of the enemy, in this case the Mexicans.
Perhaps acting not only as a metaphor, the title The
Vengeance of Pancho Villa, suggests Padilla´s
unstated intention: La venganza de Pancho Villa is a
revenge against cultural stereotypes imposed by early
American cinema.
La venganza de Pancho Villa may now be considered
as a film maudit, a precursor of what may be called
Border Cinema, not only due to the geographical location of its
practitioners, but in its attempt to freely cross, back and forth, the
dividing lines set between political and non-politically correctness; fact
and fiction, Anglo and Mexican cosmogony, Gringo and Greaser
stereotypes, but most of all, because of its intended - and at times
successful - transformation of meaning.
It is stated in Mr. Padilla´s logbook that La Venganza de Pancho Villa
made $1280.00 pesos from September, 1936 to May, 1937. This figure
represents the paid admission of at least 12,000 spectators, considering
a 10-cent admittance fee. 7
The Padillas´ leaflets of La Venganza de Pancho Villa suggest that it had
its last run in October, 1937. Small letters at the bottom of the leaflet,
read: “We will soon have sound equipment and films!”. But Empresas
Padilla never made the leap to the sound era.
*This research was possible due to grants from the Fulbright-García Robles Research
and Lecturing Program and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico.
I would like to thank the Library Special Collections Department of the University of
Texas at El Paso, The Library of Congress Film Preservation Center, Filmoteca U.N.A.M,
in Mexico, and above all, the Padilla Family for their generous support in the
development of this research.
Films cited:
La Venganza de Pancho Villa. Félix and Edmundo Padilla. Mexico/U.S.A. ca. 1930
Liberty 20 episode serial. Jacques Jaccard and Norman McRae. U.S.A. 1916
The life of General Villa. William C. Cabanne and Raoul Walsh, U.S.A. 1914
Historia de la Revolución Mexicana. Julio Lamadrid. Mexico, 1928
29 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002