Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

industry finally blossomed. 1 This decade was the so-called Golden Age of Mexican
cinema in which a large number of Spanish language films were produced, and the
industry received support from the United States. 2
By the end of the 1950s, the industry was producing a fair number of films,
though the quality was questionable. They lacked imagination, repeated the formulas of
comedias rancheras or melodramas, and included various styles of musicals and
dancing. 3 Without a doubt, cinema ‘had entered a period of general decline’. 4 Moreover,
there was no place where the filmmakers could have a professional training. Thus, in the
early 1960s a group of young people created the Grupo Nuevo Cine and ‘called for a
renovation of Mexican cinema’, 5 influenced by the New Cinema wave in Europe. Also
around these years, the national university (UNAM) created film classes and later a film
department. 6 However, despite these phenomena, and despite the appearance of some
high quality artistic films, the industry was in crisis. The massacre in Tlatelolco on 2
October 1968 undermined efforts to treat new critical topics in commercial films. It is
important to mention that the independent film industry was very active but did not
reach a wide audience because the official distributors blocked the work. 7 Thus, when
Luis Echeverría took office in 1970 the situation was critical: US Cinema was gaining
1
Andrea Noble, Mexican National Cinema (Oxon: Routledge, 2005), p. 14.
2
For more information on Mexican cinema’s Golden Age, its relation with the US, and the effects of
World War II, consult Seth Fein, ‘Golden Age Mexican Cinema’, in Fragments of a Golden Age. The
Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940, ed. by Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubinstein and Eric Zolov,
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 159-198.
3
Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema. Reflections of a Society.1896-1980 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982), p. 99.
4
David R. Maciel, ‘Cinema and the State in Contemporary Mexico, 1970-1999’ in Mexico’s Cinema: A
Century of Films and Filmmakers ed. by Joanne Hershfiled and David R. Maciel (Lanham, MD: SR
Books, 1999), 197- 233 (p. 200). According to John King, the Golden Age started its decline at the end of
the Second World War, and by the early 1950s, it had finished. John King, Magical Reels. A History of
Cinema in Latin America (London, New York: Verso, 1990; repr. 1995), p. 129.
5
Mora, Mexican Cinema…p. 105.
6
Jesús Salvador Treviño, ‘The New Mexican Cinema’, Film Quarterly, 3-32 (1979), 26-37 (p. 27).
7 Mora, Mexican Cinema… p. 112.
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