Media Type: Film
Year: 1933
Who wrote / made it : Fernando de Fuentes
Plot summary: This is one of a trilogy of the Revolutionby the director Fernando de Fuentes of which ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! is the best known. The other one is Prisionero 13 (1933) . El compadre Mendoza recounts the experiences of a hacendado during the Revolution, his shifting allegiances and eventual affiliation with the Zapatistas. El compadre Mendoza was “an explicit challenge to the ideological concoction which would soon come to dominate Mexican culture” (Mraz, 2009, 98). Darker than many of the films that would become standard fare of the studios, John Mraz compares the trilogy with José Clemente Orozco’s murals, “they emphasize the pain and torment, rather than the transformations; they exude a disenchantment with the revolution’s shortcomings instead of celebrating its achievements” (2009, 92).
Mraz, John. (2009), Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity. Durham & London: Duke University Press.