Calzonzin Inspector
| Calzonzin Inspector | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Alfonso Arau |
| Written by | Alfonso Arau |
| Starring | Virma González |
| Cinematography | Jorge Stahl Jr. |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
Calzonzin Inspector is a 1974 Mexican comedy film and live action comic adaptation directed and starred by Alfonso Arau. It was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 47th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
The film is based on the titular character from the famous Mexican comic book Los Supermachos created and drawn by Mexican cartoonist Rius, who co-wrote the screenplay. "Cazonci" or "Caltzontzin" was the term used in the Purépecha culture, to name their emperors. The film, which is influenced by Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector, centers around two poor Mexicans who are mistaken for government inspectors from Mexico City by the corrupt mayor of a small town. It is a humorous political critique, aimed squarely at the then ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its paramilitary caciques, at a time when freedom of speech in politics was highly restricted. There are at least two versions of the film, with one having some scenes deleted by State censors, the most notable of which depicts the killing of a renegade farmer by a police officer, who shoots the farmer in the back.
When the major of a fictional town in rural Mexico learns that an incognito inspector is sent by the Government to supervise him, he tries in all the ways to intercept him in order to avoid him discovering his corrupt ways. Almost at the same time a poor Mexican guy, called Caltzontzin that looks like a beggar with a Mexican sarape, arrives to town and soon is confused with the forementioned inspector.
Then the Major does all he can to try to show Caltzontzin that the town is running fine, since closing the local bar and putting in jail all his patrons, and using them to play a soccer game in the local park, making the students of a closed school to go back to attend classes, make a goofy representation of Adam and Eve in Paradise and making them to sing in front of the Inspector, through this backfires to the wife of the Major when she realizes that the pianist of the cantina made the children to sing "Aventurera" (a bolero song over a prostitute).
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