By Arturo R. García
It was perhaps inevitable that Sebastian del Amo’s Cantinflas would fit Charlie Chaplin into the proceedings. Much like Richard Attenborough before him, del Amo finds himself needing to make room for not just a performer, but a singular persona.
And there are moments when it feels like a more introspective film wants to burst through amid the usual hagiography. But a few choices do make this take on Mario Moreno and his life’s work more interesting than the trailer would have you believe.
SPOILERS under the cut
The film’s biggest asset, thankfully, is Óscar Jaenada in the title role. It might seem scandalous for Jaenada, a Spaniard, to inhabit the role of Mexico’s signature comedic character. But as both Morenos and Cantinflas, he buoys the film adroitly enough to placate concerns.
Crucially, Jaenada manages to recreate the signature rhythm of Cantinflas’ verbal riffing, though the film chalks his discovering his voice up to an encounter, perhaps apocryphal, with a heckler during one of his first monologues. Once his act was fully developed, Moreno made it plausible that his lovable underdog persona was able to dominate rooms full of people, like this one in El Super Sabio:
The film leaps ahead in time in large part because its centerpiece — Moreno’s appearance in Around The World in 80 Days — takes place after Moreno has established himself as a labor activist and entrepreneur on top of his success as an actor.
Moreno’s inclusion is framed as the linchpin to Around The World being made, since he confirms his involvement alongside a literally from-out-of-nowhere Frank Sinatra, and their participation, it seems, entices Elizabeth Taylor (Barbara Mori — how’s that for a racebend?) to sign on.
But the decision is also positioned as his first step toward redemption after cheating on his wife Valentina (Ilsa Saenz) and allowing the Cantinflas brand to go from representing Mexico’s lower socioeconomic classes to making money off of them, as shown rather pointedly in a scene where celebrities attend the lush unveiling of a mural honoring the character, while the poor people he’s supposed to represent strain for a peek from outside the hall.
Óscar Jaenada as Mario Moreno as Cantinflas in “Cantinflas.”
It makes for a feel-good ending and a statement of balance between Moreno’s life and his work: we see him win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical (this really happened) and announce that he’s both leaving Hollywood and adopting a child with Valentina. One of these statements is true: the couple did adopt a child, one he conceived with another woman. But they did remain together until she died in 1966.
In real life, however, Moreno didn’t immediately stop attempting to crack the U.S. market. Despite being warned not to do his schtick in English, Moreno attempted to do just that in 1957 with his second American feature, Pepe:
Unfortunately, not even appearances by Sinatra and Judy Garland, on top of a second Golden Globe nomination, could make Pepe a hit. Three years later, he appeared as the mystery guest on What’s My Line?:
The film has already been selected as the Mexican entry into next year’s Academy Awards, but as things stand, two factors hurt its chances: besides the historical omissions, del Amo and co-writer Edui Tijerina come up short in showing us Moreno in action as the fully-developed Cantinflas. We get snippets of directors learning to adjust (or else) to his verbal performances, but unfortunately, the only glimpse of him as a physical presence comes during the end credits, when Jaenada does his version of the eponymous sequence from El Bolero De Raquel. As he does throughout the movie, Jaenada does justice to the original, seen here:
We also don’t get any inkling of why U.S. stars like Sinatra and Taylor would hitch their wagon on Moreno’s talents, or why Chaplin would vouch for him to Around The World producer Michael Todd (Michael Imperioli, bravely battling both studio politics and an unflattering wig).
Showing Moreno gain credibility with “bigger” American performers would have fit in nicely with the narrative of the brand overtaking the man. And perhaps more importantly for Academy voters, the extra time could have helped del Amo present this story as the kind of epic a performer of Moreno’s stature deserves. After all, if Attenborough’s biography of Chaplin biography could command 143 minutes, why limit Cantinflas to 102?
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