Looking for Mr GoodWill in "Rancho Grande" and Beyond: the 'Ghostly' Presence of Shakespeare in Mexican Cinema

• Autores: Alfredo Michel Modenessi
• Localización: Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses: RAEI, ISSN-e 2171-861X, ISSN 0214-4808, Nº. 25, 2012 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Global Shakespeare / coord. por José-Manuel González Fernández-de-Sevilla, Richard Wilson, Clive A. Bellis), págs. 97-112
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • The Perhaps as an outcome of the "globalization" of Shakespeare studies, the film Huapango (dir. Iván Lipkies, 2003), avowedly based on Othello, seems to be drawing attention from scholars world-wide far more quickly and productively than the only other movie unabashedly adapted from a Shakespeare play in Mexican cinema: Cantinflas's Romeo y Julieta (dir. Miguel M. Delgado, 1943). Although in Mexico these two pictures still stand alone in deriving integrally from a Shakespeare play, they are not, of course, the sole cases in Spanish-speaking cinema, where over the years a handful of films have been made with similar premises. All of them share a simple but potentially revealing feature, however: so far, no Spanish-speaking film made from Shakespeare can be deemed a "straightforward" performance/translation of its source.

    Nonetheless, films that "reset", "cite", or somehow "ex/ap-propriate" Shakespeare are not wanting in Mexico. After briefly revisiting points I have made elsewhere on the two aforementioned pictures, this mostly descriptive paper* will aim to identify the "actual" or "ghostly" "presence" of Shakespeare in three films made at diverse stages in the history of Mexican cinema: Enamorada (dir. Emilio Fernández, 1946), El charro y la dama (dir. Fernando Cortés, 1949), and Amar te duele (dir. Fernando Sariñana, 2002).