T In Pancho Villa y la Valentina (1960), we see a series of humorous and touching vignettes in which the Mexican revolutionary leader and folk hero Pancho Villa metes out justice, cares for an orphaned infant godson, and spars with his equally strong-willed love, La Valentina. The director, Ismael Rodríguez, describes his approach in the following title card: "This film is little more than a handful of stories through which the people have expressed their gratitude and sense of justice for Pancho Villa. I wanted to believe them as if they were true... and I will tell them in my own way." But while Rodríguez frames the film as a series of simple folktales retold for the big screen, there is an underlying sophistication befitting a major director of Mexico’s “Golden Age.” In a clear homage to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), the film opens with an extended crane shot through a warehouse full of crates, moving in to a close-up of Pancho Villa’s head preserved in a glass jar.

Ismael Rodríguez (1917-2004) directed the greatest commercial success in the history of Mexican cinema, Nosotros los Pobres (1947). An urban comedy-melodrama starring Pedro Infante, one of the most popular actors of Mexican Cinema's “Golden Age,” it was the first installment of a trilogy that included Ustedes los ricos (1948) and Pepe el Toro (1953). Born in Mexico City, Rodríguez moved with his family to Los Angeles for five years before returning to Mexico in 1931. He and his brothers Roberto and Joselito subsequently established their own film production company. Another popular Pedro Infante vehicle directed by Rodríguez was the ranchera comedy Dos Tipos de cuidado (1953), co-starring Jorge Negrete. Rodríguez’s Tizoc (1957), the last film in which Pedro Infante starred before his untimely death, was awarded the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

Pedro Armendáriz (1912-1963), a veritable institution in his own right, does bear a certain physical resemblance in this film to the real-life Pancho Villa. Born to a Mexican father and an American mother, he lived for a time in Texas and studied engineering in California before returning to Mexico. Besides starring in such classics of Mexican cinema as Maria Candelaria (1944) and La Perla (1947), he appeared in a number of Hollywood films, including John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948) and Three Godfathers (1948), and the notorious John Wayne vehicle The Conqueror (1956). In fact, Armendáriz played Pancho Villa in two other films directed by Ismael Rodríguez during this period: Así Era Pancho Villa (1957), and Cuando Viva Villa Es la Muerte (1960), both of which approach the subject from a similar, folkloric perspective. Armendáriz’s final film was From Russia with Love (1963). Faced with terminal cancer, he took his own life the same year.

Producer: José Luis de Celis
Director: Ismael Rodríguez
Screenplay: Ismael Rodríguez with Rafael A. Perez, José Luis de Celis, Vicente Oroná Jr.
Director of Photography: Rosalío Solano
Film Editing: Fernando Martínez
Production Design: Salvador Lozano Mena and José Rodríguez Granada
Cast: Pedro Armendáriz (Pancho Villa); Elsa Aguirre (La Valentina); Carlos López Moctezuma (Fierro); Humberto Almazán (Luisito); Emilia Guiú (Viuda de Jones); Domingo Soler (González); Arturo Martínez (Pascual Orozco); Josefina Holguín and Hortensia Clavijo (Las Kukaras).
C-87m.

by James Steffen

Sources:
Hershfield, Joanne and David R. Maciel, eds. Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999.

Mora, Carl J. Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004. Third Ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.

Paranguá, Paulo Antonio, ed. Mexican Cinema. Trans. by Ana M. López. London: British Film Institute, 1995.