A Film Canon

This seminal product of the first Golden Age of Mexican Cinema commences in a primitive, melodramatic register, but gradually deepens its characterisation and narrative ingenuity to approach something closer to social realism, insofar as this is possible for a film in which singing, whistling and playing instruments is one of the key cohesive devices, recalling the early days of European sound cinema and, more specifically, Rene Clair's conception of the neighbourhood as a sonic phenomenon, reducible to a single building, or built structure, that is little more than a tympanum for its various harmonious voices. That said, the continual intersection of iconic carpenter Pepe's (Pedro Infante) romantic life with a network of observant women - especially his daughter, whose almost murderous jealousy refuses to allow her dead mother's house to be 'stained' any more than is necessary, as well as his own mother, who is mute and paralysed, and so entirely reduced to her observations - makes for a relatively hysterical pitch, albeit one that, combined with Infante's own burgeoning hero-worship, indicates a cultic, or devotional aspiration, thereby replacing the intellectual liberation of social realism with a more visceral catharsis encapsulated in the overwhelmingly tactile quality of the narrative. It feels as if characters are constantly touching, embracing, or, in some cases, repelling each other - partly by virtue of their sheer proximity - and inviting the intended viewer to do the same, to temporarily forget abject poverty for the sake of caressing Infante's handsome charisma.