Wild Flower (film)

Wild Flower
Directed by	Emilio Fernández
Written by	Emilio Fernández Mauricio Magdaleno
Produced by	Agustin J. Fink
Starring	Dolores del Río Pedro Armendáriz Miguel Ángel Ferríz Fernando Soto LaMarina Mimí Derba
Cinematography	Gabriel Figueroa
Edited by	Jorge Bustos
Music by	Francisco Domínguez
Distributed by	Films Mundiales
Release date	1943
Running time	94 minutes
Country	Mexico
Language	Spanish

Wild Flower (Spanish: Flor silvestre) is a 1943 Mexican historical film directed by Emilio Fernández and starring Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz. Is the first Mexican movie of Dolores del Río after her career in Silent and Golden Age's Hollywood films. It's the first movie of an extended collaboration between Fernández-Del Rio-Armendáriz, Gabriel Figueroa (cinematography) and Mauricio Magdaleno (writer). It also marked the debut of Emilia Guiú in a small role as an extra. The film is considered like the film that defined the so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

Plot

In a small village in central Mexico in the early twentieth century, José Luis (Pedro Armendáriz), son of the landowner Don Francisco (Miguel Ángel Ferriz), marries secretly with Esperanza (Dolores del Río), a beautiful and humble peasant. Disgusted by the wedding and because his son has become in a revolutionary, Don Francisco disinherit Jose Luis and kicks him out of his house. After the triumph of the Mexican Revolution, the couple lives happily until Jose Luis is forced to confront a couple of false revolutionaries who have kidnapped Esperanza and his young son

Cast

• Dolores del Río .... Esperanza
• Pedro Armendáriz .... José Luis Castro
• Emilio Fernández .... Rogelio Torres
• Miguel Ángel Ferriz Sr. .... don Francisco
• Armando Soto La Marina "Chicote" .... Reynaldo
• Agustín Isunza .... Nicanor
• Eduardo Arozamena .... Melchor
• Mimí Derba .... doña Clara
• Margarita Cortés .... sister of José Luis
• Manuel Dondé .... Úrsulo Torres
• José Elías Moreno .... colonel Pánfilo Rodríguez, Esperanza
• Lucha Reyes
• Trío Calaveras
• Pedro Galindo .... Pedro
• Carlos Riquelme
• Tito Novaro .... son of Esperanza
• Emilia Guiú .... an extra

Comments

For the history of the Mexican Cinema, 1943 comes to become one of its most emblematic years. Emilio Fernández was about to become in one of the pillars of the Mexican cinema. Fernández had directed two films: The Passion Island (Clipperton) (1941) and Soy puro Mexicano (1942), but a project was needed to show the talent of "El Indio" as a director. He needed an interesting film project with technical and human Since 1942, Agustin J. Fink, president of the Mexican film studio Films Mundiales was in talks with Dolores del Río, who had left Hollywood with the intention of settling in Mexico. Fink recalled the previous works of Fernandez and the director felt that deserved the opportunity to direct a film in more appropriate circumstances. The result was better than the wily Fink could have imagined. Thanks to the successful combination of talent, Wild Flower became not only a blockbuster but the starting point for fruitful collaboration between "El Indio" Fernandez and the team that would perform several of his best films: writer Mauricio Magdaleno, photographer Gabriel Figueroa and the leading film couple Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz. Wild Flower is considered the most emblematic film of the filmmaker and one of the most beautiful films of Mexican cinema.

Bibliography

• Segre, Erica. Intersected Identities: Strategies of Visualisation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Mexican Culture. Berghahn Books, 2007.

External links

• Wild Flower at IMDb