Maria Candelaria
| María Candelaria (Xochimilco) | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Emilio Fernández |
| Produced by | Agustin J. Fink |
| Written by | Emilio Fernández |
| Starring |
Dolores del Río Pedro Armendáriz Alberto Galán Miguel Inclán Julio Ahuet |
| Music by | Francisco Domínguez |
| Cinematography | Gabriel Figueroa |
| Edited by | Jorge Bustos |
| Distributed by | Films Mundiales Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Running time
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96 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
María Candelaria is a 1944 Mexican film directed by Emilio Fernández and starring Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz. It was the first Mexican film to be screened at the Cannes International Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix (now known as the Palme d'Or) becoming the first Latin American film to do so.María Candelaria would later win a Silver Ariel award for Best Cinematography.
The film came to be regarded as one of Fernández's best works, in which he portrays the indigenous people of Mexico with innocence and dignity. Fernández has said that he wrote an original version of the plot on 13 napkins while sitting in a restaurant. He was anxious because he was dating Dolores del Río and could not afford to buy her a birthday present. The film was originally titled Xochimilco and the protagonist was named María del Refugio.
Major themes in the film include melodrama, indigenousness, nationalism, and the beauty of Mexico.María Candelaria is one of Mexico's most beloved films of all time, and it was ranked thirty-seventh among the top 100 films of Mexican cinema.
A young journalist presses an old artist (Alberto Galán) to display the portrait of a naked indigenous woman that he has in his study. As the artist begins to tell the story behind the painting, the action becomes a flashback to Xochimilco, Mexico in 1909, right before the Mexican Revolution. Xochimilco is an area with beautiful landscapes inhabited mostly by indigenous people.
The woman in the painting is María Candelaria (Dolores del Río), a young indigenous woman shunned by her own people for being the daughter of a prostitute. She and her lover, Lorenzo Rafael (Pedro Armendáriz), face constant struggles. They are honest and hardworking, yet nothing ever goes right for them. Don Damián (Miguel Inclán), a jealous Mestizo store owner who wants María for himself, prevents them from getting married. He kills a piglet that María and Lorenzo planned to sell for profit and refuses to buy flowers from them. When María contracts malaria, Don Damián refuses to give the couple the quinine necessary to fight the disease. Lorenzo breaks into the store to steal the medicine and takes a wedding dress for María. Lorenzo goes to prison for stealing and María agrees to model for the painter to pay for his release. The artist begins painting her portrait and then asks her to pose nude, which she refuses to do.
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