Learning Pedro Infante

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Pedro Infante in Nosotros Los Pobres, or "We, the Poor"

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He is strong, he is sensitive, but the movie Pedro often has a woman problem. At times a female will be too aggressive for him, like the smoldering, man-eating Katy Jurado in The Seminarian: "Are you retarded? Or are you afraid of me?" she asks as she brazenly removes her shawl. A more troubling blind spot in the Infante character: he keeps falling in love with racial snobs. In The Woman I Lost he becomes a fugitive for having protected Silvia Pinal's honor, only to find that she disdains the half-breed beauty who has saved his life. (She is played by Blanca Estela Pavón, Infante's love interest in six of his late '40s, who died in a plane crash in 1949, at 23). "You dirty Indian," Silvia hisses. "What do you know about love?" The Mexican audience knew to hiss back.

BLACK ANGELS

Like the U.S., Mexico had a race problem. With plentiful intermarrying between the indigenous population and the descendants of Spanish emigrés, the country was its own rainbow coalition, or contradiction. Most of the movie stars were light-skinned; those that weren't often played comic or villainous relief. But unlike Hollywood, Mexico didn't ignore the race issue. And in Joselito Rodriguez' Angelitos Negros (Little Black Angels), the prejudice of the invaders toward the natives, or anyone with native blood, is crucial, poignant and bizarre. Its script, by Rogelio A. González (from a play by the Cuban Felix B. Caignet), has to be recounted in a little detail to believed. After hearing it, you may still be incredulous.

Infante plays José Carlos, a popular singer who falls for Ana Luisa (Emilia Gul), a schoolteacher who's very proper, very blond, very snooty to those of darker hue. She's downright rude to José Carlos' closest comrades: his Afro-Cuban bandmate, Fernando (Chimi Monterrey), and the band's sexy, dusky lead dancer, Isabel (Chela Castro), who clearly has a crush on the oblivious José Carlos. "You lower yourself dancing with that mulatta," Ana Luisa sneers, to which her color-blind beau replies, "It was God's decision that she's of mixed race." Ana Luisa also thinks that his performing in blackface is demeaning, but he shrugs that off with a laugh: "You're very lucky: You're being courted by two men. A white one by day and a black one by night." Plighting his troth, he declares, "Black, white, or with a striped face like a zebra, I love you very much."

As boy and girl get closer to marriage, unexpected opposition emerges from Ana Luisa's black maid Mercé (Rita Montaner), who has raised her selflessly since infancy; Ana Luisa believes she is an orphan. José Carlos, who has much more affection for Mercé than Ana Luisa does, tries charming her with odd endearments: "my soot cloud," "my little tar ball," and "You are a refined black lady, you were made of the finest coal where diamonds are extracted from." Her reason for fighting the betrothal is that she is Ana Luisa's mother, though she has never told the girl. Love has made Mercé endure both her maid status and the contempt her daughter sometimes shows her —as when she denies Mercé's plea to attend the wedding. (Ana Luisa also tells Fernando he's not welcome to be Jos Carlos' best man, or even come to the church. When Isabel asks why, he holds up his black hands and stares at them.)

A year later, a child is born: Belén, and her skin is dark. Ana Luisa, horrified, and fearful of being ostracized by her rich friends, blames José Carlos for having had black ancestors. Now would seem to be the time to tell Ana Luisa where she came from; but the doctor says her heart is too weak to take a severe shock. "I wish I could say it were my fault," the new father says of his baby girl. "Then I could proudly say she is from my black blood." Instead he promises Mercé he will keep silent: "You made a sacrifice for your daughter. I'll do the same for mine."

Belén is now four, with her father's (and grandmother's) loving disposition, but Ana Luisa still resents and recoils from her. "Why didn't God send me a white and blond girl?" she demands. "I would've loved her so much." (And Mercé asks, "What did black people do to make you hate us so much?") Desperate for affection from her mother, Belén puts pancake makeup on her face, saying, "I want to be white so mama will love me." Ana Luisa sees this pathetic travesty, and kisses Belén for the first time.

Now the tensions boil over, the ironic dialogue gets hotter. Ana Luisa exclaims, in agony, "Oh, if only my mother were alive!" and, in anger, "I'd kill myself if my mother were black." (Hearing that, José Carlos slaps her.) Mercé, ground down by the ill feelings, is getting weaker. And when Ana Luisa calls her a "damn black woman" and strikes her," José Carlos shouts the words the movie has been steaming toward: "Don't! She is your mother!" Revelation; guilt; death; renewal. Sensation.

Pretty amazing, huh? But the story isn't the strangest thing about Angelitos Negros. The casting is. Except for Monterrey, all the actors playing African or mixed-race characters were white. The movie is a parable of race hatred and racial understanding, done in blackface. As such, and because it is played with such ferocious conviction, the film is a not-to-be-missed one-of-a-kind.

One can quibble about plot anomalies. If having a black child was a scourge to someone passing as white, why wouldn't José Carlos' career have been blighted? For that matter, why does he stay with this awful woman, when the much more comely and congenial Isabel is panting to take her place? The answer must be: Because it's a parable, stupid. But also because Infante has a natural nobility that explains why José Carlos (J.C. for short) remains loving through this Calvary of abuse. In so many of his films, a Pedro smile or tear or grimace make the wildest plot twist plausible (almost). A great spirit must endure great suffering. His silent soldiering-on here is no less heroic than the dreadful beating he takes, and then dishes out, during the Pepe el Toro boxing match. As the ringside announcer says with awe in that movie, "His heart is so big, his chest can't contain it."

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. BUT NOT GONE?

The Pedro Infante collection will eventually span 23 features. Now that my appetite is stoked, I'd like to catch up with Dos tipos de cuidado (The Troublesome Two), his only film co-starring Jorge Negrete, and the 1956 Tizoc, his last big movie and the only one he made with Maria Felix. There's also "Los tres huastecos (Three Guys from La Huasteca), in which Pedro plays three roles: a stalwart Army captain, a violin-playing priest and a lumpen atheist. In one film planned at the time of his death, Infante was to play seven different characters.

There were supposedly discussions about his coming to Hollywood. But those and all other dreams were cut short when he died. Or did he? In the myth of the hero, death is often only a pause before resurrection. "Some say Pedro Infante still lives," Chavéz writes. "Some say he was killed in the plane crash. Some say the left side of his face was mutilated and that he now lives in hiding (age 87) in the Sierra Nevadas. Some say he was having an affair with the President of Mexico's mistress and the Mexican mafia was after him and he had to go into hiding. ... I just heard from a friend in El Paso that she knows someone with impeccable credentials who has testified for sure that Pedro did not die on that plane! And not only that, but her friend has lunch with him three or four times a year!"

So Elvis lives, and Pedro didn't perish. Watching some of Infante's movies may not make you cultists, but when it comes to Mexico's La Época de Oro del Cine, you'll be a believer.

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