Introduction: Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes, aka “Cantinflas,” created a simple, universal character whose roundabout phrases and meaningless speeches confounded those around him, but delighted Spanish-speaking audiences for decades. On May 11, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will debut seven comedy classics starring the beloved Mexican comedian that have never before been released on DVD: A Volar Joven, El Circo, El Gendarme Desconocido, El Mago, El Senor Fotografo, Los Tres Mosqueteros, and Si Yo Fuera Diputado. In addition, four titles are being re-released: El Bolero de Raquel, El Analfabeto, El Padrecito, and Su Excelencia. Each title in the Cantinflas collection will be available separately for $14.94 SRP. 

Mario “Cantinflas” Moreno, whom the legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin dubbed “the funniest man in the world,” began his career in the 1930s in the “carpas” (tent shows) of Mexico City. After early attempts to find his comedic voice, he embraced his own heritage as a lowly slum dweller, and audiences enthusiastically endorsed this comic persona. With his tiny mustache tipping the corner of his mouth, a cockeyed cap over dark, disheveled hair, dirty vest and a rope for a belt, Cantinflas became the idol of the masses by satirizing the police and politicians.

As a pioneer in the Mexican film industry, Cantinflas helped usher in its golden era. His foray into American cinema landed him a Golden Globe^® as Best Actor for his role in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but his comedic presence shined brightest in his Spanish language films. People everywhere identified with the struggles of this winsome ragamuffin, and when he died in 1993, thousands endured a violent downpour in order to touch his casket as it lay in state. His funeral was a national event, lasting three days and attended by the presidents of Mexico, Peru, and El Salvador, and the United States Senate held a moment of silence for him.

It’s not hard to see a connection between Cantinflas’ screen persona and the Toro-san comedies of Kiyoshi Atsimi and Yoji Yamada that followed on the other side of the globe.  Tora-san is uneducated, a drunkard, a gambler, and a low level yakuza who leaves home in his teens who returns in an attempt to re-enter some semblance of a family.  Comedy and romance are blended in just about every movie as Toro-san’s well-meaning, usually crude interference upsets others while he falls in love only to have his hopes dashed. 

It’s a familiar formula that we can find in vaudeville and the films of Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy, among many others.  But whereas Toro-san is simple, naïve and – let's face it – a little stupid – a typical Cantinflas character always gives the impression that he knows more than he is letting on, that there is method in his madness.  He is never anyone's fool.

Comparisons to Chaplin are often cited, but my impression is quite different.  True, El Circo and Si yo fuero disputado acknowledge Chaplin's The Circus and The Great Dictator, and both men are clever social satirists, poking at the rich and pompous - But how they go about it is very different. Chaplin is polished, artful, contrived.  Cantinflas is rough, spontaneous, improvised.  Chaplin is hapless. Cantinflas, a juggernaut.  Look at how he wears his clothes: like his movies, they are slapdash, his trousers about to fall off at any moment.  Chaplin's wardrobe is unmistakenly the product of a smart costume designer. Cantinflas is sly.  He is Groucho and Chico by way of Preston Sturges. (in El Gendarme Desconocido look for a scene at a ballroom that could have been lifted directly out of The Lady Eve, released earlier the same year.) 

Cantinflas has some of the physicality, if not the grace, of a Buster Keaton.  He tends not to repeat himself with characteristic bits of business.  I have always felt that Chaplin, unlike Keaton, was keenly aware of and playing to his audience.  He seems at work, even in his comedy.  I feel manipulated, as if he's daring me not to sympathisize.  Cantinflas couldn't care less, or he at least gives that impression.  Despite the screwball nature of his comedy, Cantinflas comes across as sincere and believable, which is his special gift.

The Cantinflas movies represented in Sony’s new collection covers most of his career in films beginning with academy ratio black & whites of the early 1940s to the mid-1960s widescreen color.  These movies are all directed by the same man (Miguel Delgado, who also wrote all but a couple of these movies) and produced by the same studio that the actor established in 1939 (Posa Films). 

From the start, we see that while these movies are well photographed in terms of lighting and focus, but very little attention was paid to the most rudimentary of directorial necessities: dialogues are presented with few if any cuts to close-ups, and most shots are photographed with a fixed camera.  In El Circo (The Circus) Cantinflas' work on the trapeze is performed mostly as the trapeze simply hangs still.  For some of his more daring stunts the camera is sometimes so far away we cannot be certain if it is he who is doing them.  This undermines both comedy and suspense.  The stunts on the slack wire in El Circo are amazing no matter who is doing it, especially when you consider that there are no erasable wires to hold the guy up.

In just a few years, beginning with A Volar Joven, production values improve considerably.  There are more varied camera angles and more cuts.  As the camera begins to move, if only a little, excitement builds.  Though rarely flat in his earlier films, lighting becomes more interesting, as do the stories.  Music pops up here and there to underscore the emotional tension.  Sound effects are smartly and more liberally used.  These are movies, not merely staged acts.