Mexican society is male dominated. And among these men, the most highly esteemed values are being macho, having money, and protecting their women and children. The lowest values are being a coward, and poverty. Does this sound so outdated?
La hija del engaño (1951, Luis Buñuel) is a throwaway commercial assignment with very little to offer cinematically. It relies too heavily on its plot about the inevitable reconciliation between a father and the daughter he abandoned when she was an infant.
But it still packs a wallop of a caricature of hombres sinvergüenzas. While La hija del engaño is a broad comedy that suffers from too often indulging uninspired instances of hamming it up, it nevertheless includes domestic abuse toward spouse and child from a belligerent alcoholic guardian, and a fair amount of gun violence.
Two scenes had me hollering with boisterous laughter. The first takes place in DON QUINTÍN’S casino, when a short fat Mexican gambler named EL JONRÓN repeatedly threatens the staff that if they don’t cater to his beck and whim he’ll give them a “homerun” (his slang for firing his pistol?!). The gunman is confronted by the bouncer, another short fat Mexican. This conflict escalates into a duel of monosyllabic grunts that is the most effectively perfect epitome of idiot Mexicans desperately trying to prove their masculinity in public through violence I’ve probably ever seen; guns drawn, they yell at each other like children daring each other to shoot first, because each of them know the one to shoot first will be the one to face criminal punishment from the law.
And operating on a similar code of conduct, the scene later when Don Quintín and his men throw food at MARTHA and PACO’S table slays just as hard. For me what is so effective about this olive throwing business is how effectively I felt the humiliation and its rising tension. There were higher stakes between these two tables and some breadcrumbs than I’ve encountered in some of the hugest Hollywood action sequences.
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