Miguel Contreras Torres

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Miguel Contreras Torres (born September 28, 1899 in Morelia , † June 5, 1981 in Mexico City ) was a Mexican film director , film producer , screenwriter and actor . Prior to his career in the Mexican film industry , he was an insurgent officer in the Mexican Revolution . He is considered to be the only director of early Mexican film who managed to switch from silent to sound films without any problems. He took up topics that had not been dealt with before in his films and thus played a pioneering role.

life and work

Miguel Contreras Torres fought on the side of the insurgents in the Mexican Revolution and held the position of officer. After the end of the civil war, he began his career in the Mexican film industry in the early 1920s . He made his debut in 1920 as an actor in the film El Zarco by José Manuel Ramos . For his performance, Contreras Torres was compared to William S. Hart , a star of the Hollywood westerns . A short time later, he began producing and directing films. This is how Miguel Contreras Torres shot De Raza Azteca in 1922 . Then he turned to regional issues with the two films El Caporal and El Sueño del Caporal . In them he took up life in northern Mexico. Also in 1922, Contreras Torres made El hombre sin patria, the first film to deal with Mexican emigration to the United States. As a director, Miguel Contreras Torres made films of various genres. Almas Tropicales from 1923 is a romance film about the love of a young man, the last shot of which shows the couple in front of the rising sun. In Oro, sangre y Sol from the same year, he filmed the life of a famous bullfighter. With Aguiluchos Mexicanos he filmed a melodrama in 1924 about a mother who is critical and anxious about her son's career as a pilot.

Contreras Torres didn't just work in Mexico. In 1926 he shot El Relicario in Mexico, Hollywood and Spain . In 1927 and 1928 he shot El León de Sierra Morena in Spain. In 1929 he returned to Mexico, where he wrote the scripts for two nationalist films and also produced and directed them. These were Soñadores de la Gloria and El àguila y el Nópal . In 1931 Miguel Contreras Torres shot his last silent film with Zitán . His film Juárez y Maximiliano hit theaters in 1933 and was the top grossing Mexican film on the weekend premiere of the 1930s. He continued the royal theme of this film for a few more years. So in La Paloma , La Emperatriz Loca and Caballería del imperio . Miguel Contreras Torres made films until the late 1960s, making him the longest-running early Mexican director and the only one who had made the successful move from silent to talkies.

Filmography

literature

  • Carl J. Mora: Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004: Reflections of a Society, 1896-2004. Mcfarland, 2005, ISBN 0-7864-2083-9 .
  • David R. Maciel, Joanne Hershfield: Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers. Sr Books, 1999, ISBN 0-8420-2682-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David R. Maciel, Joanne Hershfield: Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers. Sr Books, 1999, p. 21.
  2. ^ David R. Maciel, Joanne Hershfield: Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers. Sr Books, 1999, p. 22.
personal data
SURNAME Contreras Torres, Miguel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican revolutionary, actor, director, producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Morelia
DATE OF DEATH 5th June 1981
Place of death Mexico city