- Alberto Najar
- BBC Mundo, Mexico City
image source, BBC World Service
Mexicans don’t care about the unpleasant side of Cantinflas (AFP photo)
Many believe that Cantinflas was the best comedy actor in the history of Mexico. But Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes, his real name, was a radically different person.
His character, a nice young man with a piece of cloth over his shoulder that they called a raincoat, with his pants tied by a cord ten centimeters below the waist, a worn hat and a peculiar way of speaking without saying anything, made everyone laugh. who saw it on the screen.
But on the street, with his fellow artists or the places the actor frequented, he was cold, hostile and arrogant, according to those who knew him.
Now that the first film about the actor’s life is being released in Mexico, some remember that little-known part of the actor.
contrasts
The writer Guadalupe Loaeza assures that Cantinflas and Mario Moreno were two people in one, who lived in permanent contradiction.
«He was a man who was not worldly friendly, he was unpleasant,» he tells BBC Mundo. «Mario Moreno was a very sinister character, with a very obvious ambiguity. His colleagues didn’t like him.»
image source, APKenloFilms.comPantelionFilms
In Sebastián del Amo’s film, the role of Cantinflas is played by Öscar Jaenada.
However, others have a very different vision of the character. Those who worked with him at the beginning of his career say, for example, that he distributed the first salary he earned in a formal theater, the Garibaldi, among shoe shiners and newspaper vendors.
And some more remember that for decades, in the presidential elections, thousands of people voted for Cantinflas as their candidate, although the actor never openly participated in politics.
His supporters wrote his name on the ballot paper. Those votes were annulled but they are a sign of the trust and popular sympathy that exists in Mexico for the artist.
The detail
Mario Moreno was a boxer, dancer, waiter and even enlisted in the Army for a while, until he discovered that he had lied about his age to enlist.
So the character was born. Cantinflas began his career in the 1930s as a comic actor in traveling theaters known as carpas, in Mexico City.
image source,
There’s the Detail is one of Cantinflas’ best films (photo AFP)
It was a success almost from the beginning, and in 1936 he filmed his first film, Don’t be fooled by my heart, which went almost unnoticed by the public.
But the story changed four years later. His third film, There’s the Detail, became a box office success and at the same time marked Cantinflas’s career.
The phrase that gave the film its name accompanied him throughout the rest of his filmography, and even in 1956 he won the Golden Globe Award with the film Around the World in 80 Days.
In his career he recorded some 50 pieces in Mexico and the United States, most of them, 39, were made by his production company Posa Films.
Since 1993, when the actor died, his adoptive son Mario Moreno Ivanova and his cousin, Eduardo Moreno Laparade, have been suing for the rights and royalties to these 39 films.
power and fortune
In some of his conversations with journalists, Mario Moreno referred to Cantinflas as another person. And so it was in real life, his critics agree.
In the magazine Eme Equis, the journalist Luis Guillermo Hernández recalled, for example, that the actor was an adviser to President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, one of the most controversial leaders in the country, since the massacre of students took place in his government on October 2, 1968.
He was also a promoter of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), according to declassified documents from the now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), which for decades was the country’s political police.
«His public fame, his prestige, but above all the love that the majority of the population has for his character, allow him to have the right to handle presidents, diplomats, officials, and dignitaries from other countries,» writes Hernández.
«That influence, that political and social power, then, has to be used by Mario Moreno for his private benefit, as the government’s own spies have to document,» the journalist stressed.
Something that translated into great fortunes, adds the writer Loaeza, and that sharpened the contradiction of her life:
On the one hand, in the cinema he represented a poor person with little education and money, but outside of filming he lived in great luxury.
In the cinema there were also two Cantinflas, says Guadalupe Loaeza:
image source, BBC World Service
After his death in 1993 thousands fired Cantinflas
The films that he filmed in black and white showed a mischievous and friendly character from the neighborhood, who with the advent of color films became another who used to give moral lessons.
Sometimes their dialogues coincided with the policies of the government in turn. «He became very institutional, in his films he sent political messages. He was no longer the comedian of the town,» insists the writer.
But this was not noticed on April 20, 1993 when a tribute was paid to the actor at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the country’s main cultural venue.
For 14 continuous hours, more than 250,000 people filed past his attack to see him off. And when the centenary of his birth was recorded, in 2011, miles went to the tributes.
Does the unpleasant part of the character really matter? «Mexicans don’t want to meet her, there is a certain denial,» answers Guadalupe Loaeza.
«They want to keep their Cantinflas, he seemed very close to the people and they don’t want to be disappointed.»
