Roberto Gavaldón was a consummate film professional who worked his way into the emerging Mexican film industry beginning in the late ’20s, doing everything from acting to editing to assisting directors Alberto Gout, Alejandro Galindo and Gabriel Soria. His long apprenticeship made him a detailed craftsman behind the camera, known for carefully planning every shot in even his most modest productions.
Like his contemporaries Emilio Fernandez, Ismael Rodrigues and Luis Buñuel, Gavaldón worked on a wide variety of subjects and genres in Mexico’s highly commercial industry: he developed a series of slow boil thrillers from three works written by the enigmatic German émigré writer B. Traven (author of the source novel for John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ~ Read more...) and collaborated extensively with writer and activist José Revueltas.
Yet certain recurrences—from a catalogue of slighted heroes seeking revenge to the intricate visuals developed through Gavaldón’s close working relationships with cinematographers Alex Philips and Gabriel Figueroa—dominate the director’s work, establishing his legacy as one of Mexico’s most complex and gifted filmmakers. Read more...
Click on Program Overview for a listing of films in the series .
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Calendar to view the schedule & purchase tickets online ($1.25 service charge per ticket).
Series Pass admits one person to five titles in the series; $40 public/$30 Film Society members, available only at the Walter Reade Theater box office (cash only transactions).
Wounded Pride, Simmering Passion: Roberto Gavaldón was organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center , Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival FICCO–Cinemex and Mexico National Cinematheque. The series was programmed by Richard Peña. Special thanks to Filmoteca de la UNAM, Guadalupe Ferrer, Francisco Gaytán, Francisco Ogem, Cineteca Nacional, Leonardo Garcia Tsao, Susana Lopez Aranda, Nelson Carro, Roberto Gavaldon Jr., Alfredo Gavaldon, Juan Jose Ortega, Pablo Barbachano, Rogelio Agrasanchez Jr., Rogelio Agrasanchez, Irma O. Larios Alzúa, Raúl Zorrilla, Marcela Fernadez Violante, Arq. Guillermo Lozano, the UCLA Archive and the Fundacion Televisa for their support.
More on Roberto Gavaldón
Born in 1909 in Jiménez, Chihuahua, Mexico, Roberto Gavaldón entered an emerging Mexican film industry in the late ’20s in various projects as an actor, editor or assistant. La Barraca (1946) firmly established him as one of Mexico’s most gifted directors. He won ten Ariels (Mexico’s national cinema prize) at the inaugural awards, including the Golden Ariel for best picture and a Silver Ariel for direction. Gavaldón earned his second best director nomination the following year for The Other One. Gavaldón died in Mexico City in 1986.
Who was B. Traven?
Most famous for the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, “B. Traven” was the enigmatic figure behind three of the films appearing in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Roberto Gavaldón series: the Oscar-nominated fairy tale Macario, once-censored Rosa Blanca and the Hitchcockian Autumn Days.
The true identity of “B. Traven” the subject of much speculation, the writer’s work was distinguished by a bleak vision and pro-anarchist sympathies. Traven’s revolutionary ideology comes through in Galvadon’s controversial Rosa Blanca, which presaged There Will Be Blood in its portrayal of a farmer pitted against the greedy oil industry, then emerging in Mexico.
But politics were not the mysterious novelist’s only interest. Nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film and certainly Gavaldón’s best-known work internationally, Macario is based on a story B. Traven adapted from the Brothers Grimm, which was then turned into a screenplay by Gavaldón and Emilio Carballido.
But who was this mysterious figure? Wild theories have circulated about the identity from “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” writer Ambrose Bierce to the president of Mexico. In 1979, Will Wyatt and Robert Robinson of BBC TV made a documentary about B. Traven that claimed to definitely established his identity as that of Ret Marut, a German national. You can watch the whole documentary online.
The investigation into the background of Traven reveals a number of figures, now generally believed to be one person, who was responsible for the work of the mysterious author. They include Traven’s supposed agent Hal Croves, who spent much time on the set of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with John Ford, as well as a political radical named Otto Feige.
None of these theories solve the real mystery, however: how was the multiple identity-having Traven able to write so many stories that made it to the silver screen?
