Viento negro
Mexico,
1965, 127 min
Shown in 1966
CREDITS
- dir
-
Servando González
- prod
-
Luis Garcia de León, César Santos Galindo
- scr
-
Rafael García Travesi, Servando González, Nino Martini
- cam
-
Agustín Jimenez
- editor
-
Jorge Bustos
- mus
-
Gustavo César Carrión
- cast
-
José Elias Moreno, David Reynoso, Jorge Martínez do Hoyos, Enrique Lizalde, Fernando Luján, Rodolfo Landa, Enrique Aguilar, Guillermo Álvarez
- prod co
-
Producciones Yanco
- source
-
Producciones Yanco
OTHER
The equivocal Mexican cinema still baffles the world. To most cinema devotees, it represents Luis Buñuel or Cantinflas, each at either end of the tragicomic scale, with a great deal of musical comedy and tearjerkers in between. Since last year, it seems, a new wave of experimental talent has appeared in the cinema world of Mexico (Alberto Isaac, Ruben Gámez, Juan José Gurrola). But in this sweeping, Zolaesque film about a worker at odds with his family and colleagues during the construction of a railroad, director Servando González reveals still another trend. Black Wind is a traditional melodrama, exceptionally well-made, enhanced by a realistic background—the vast desert country between Sonora and Baja California. The hero, Manuel Iglesias, is a rough figure-of-circumstance, trapped by conflicting devotion to his son and to his own ambitions, and as the film explores the dangerous adventures of the hero and the progress of the railroad, one is reminded of the early works of Carné. The characters struggle toward the attainment of an ideal, but are kept within an invisible trap of life, from which the image of happiness seems incredibly near, but is hopelessly remote after all. Naturally, a story of this kind depends entirely upon the major figure, and the distinguished actor, José Elias Moreno, succeeds in bringing to Miguel the epic qualities one might expect from a modern reincarnation of Job.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #361
John Huston, director of classics The Maltese Falcon and The Misfits, was honored with a Festival tribute in 1968. His daughter Anjelica received the Peter J. Owens Award in 1991; The Dead, one of the father-daughter duo’s collaborations, screened at her onstage interview.
