Biography of Cantinflas [Mario Moreno Reyes] | Actor.

(City of Mexico, 1911 - ID, 1993) Mexican comic actor. Became world famous with the name of your character Cantinflas, that gave life in most of the films shot.

Of humble origins, he enlisted in a company of comedians travelling and toured all over Mexico. In the circus developed all kinds of works, among them play small roles.

At the end of the 1920s he began to act in the premises of the city of Mexico and created the prototype image that would become famous. In 1930 was already the most famous comic in the country. In 1934 he met the actress of Russian-born Valentina Subarev, who got married and had her only son, Mario Arturo.

In 1936, with ample baggage accumulated during their stay at the circus of Jalapa, representing papers in small theatrical productions - exceptionally set to music in the style of the Género chico - debuted in the film don't be fooled heart, followed by This is my land and Eagle or Sun (1937), the sign of death (1939) and a series of short films.

However, non-enshrined definitely as undisputed Idol until 1940, in the film there is detail - directed by Juan Bustillo Oro-, whose last scene and through their delusional speech, Cantinflas skip social conventions, managing to change the verdict of the judge. This film gave the occasion of founding the company Posa Films, always ready in the darkness (Always Read in the Darkness) and ginger against dynamite (Ginger versus Dynamite), failed attempts to penetrate the market Hollywood. Despite this, from his debut as a protagonist in the film there is detail (1940), actor, with its nearly fifty films, broke records collection in the exhibition rooms of Latin America for three consecutive decades.

The popularity of this sacred monster of Mexican cinema and, in general, of the Spanish Theater owes much to his work in films neither blood nor sand (titled in the United States Neither Blood and Sand) and the unknown gendarme (1941), in which discovered its ideal Director, Miguel M. Delgado, Assistant to the Director Alejandro Galindo. The first was a parody of the work of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, whose film version had been recently premiered in the United States, starring the actors Tyrone Power, Rita Hayworth and Linda Darnell. With both works, Mario Moreno hoped to amortize the economic effort invested in Posa Films, which became sole producer. Not in vain neither blood nor sand raised 54,000 pesos in four days during its premiere at the Teatro Alameda.

This overwhelming success continued with the unknown policeman (The Unknown Policeman), Mapy Cortés and Gloria Marín, considered one of the best films of Mexican actor. In it, the ridicule of the police, generally hated by the public, is set from the moment that Cantinflas appears with his usual seedy uniform.

Cantinflas in the supersabio (1948)
and the illiterate (1960)

In 1944 he joined the Union of workers of the industry film (STIC), founded in 1919 under the name of Union of employees confederates of the cinematograph. His contribution was decisive in improving the conditions of recruitment of staff from the studies, because he headed a planned strike, seconded by Jorge Negrete and Arturo de Córdova (with whom he had a strong polemic by the Directorate of the National Association of actors [go]).

In the 1950s, their tapes show a change: the picaresque urban and popular character would be just a humour based on the repetitive use of "cantinflismo", the ability to speak much and say nothing. In all, Mario Moreno became a carrier of judgments and criticisms against the "small-town" society, in particular, and against humanity, in general. In this way, with singular focus lashed "denatured aristocracy", making that the real thing about fake triumph. It was the man who always told the truth, but in a sarcastic way, and suffered the consequences of that fidelity itself.

Exceptionally, he participated in the American blockbuster around the world in eighty days (1957). The film was well received, which led to the actor shot then Pepe, directed by George Sidney in 1960. The failure of the film decided to Mario Moreno not again try his luck outside the borders of their own country, with the only exception of the Spanish feature film Don Quixote rides again, directed by Manuel Delgado, with whom he had worked in films such as El bolero de Raquel (1956) and El padrecito (1965), the first feature film to the actor filmed in color.

If in their interpretations denounced social inequalities and the lack of solidarity, in real life doing charity work and came to mount an office for the needy. The last stage of his life, after widowhood in 1966, was marked by his involvement in social and political (even arrived to make a speech in the Assembly of the United Nations).

A comic genius

But the truth is that Cantinflas will be remembered by do succeed to a rogue good heart which presents some parallelism with the character of Charles Chaplin Charlot, while the key to the Mexican was always linked to disparate and inexhaustible glib, who turned it into the most popular comic genius has given Mexico. His character based his comedy on some naive reactions, in their astonishing naturalness and his personal and lawless monologues, continuous, embarullados, inexhaustible, authentic flow of the most delirious verbalism that began with unusual fluidity and ended in unintelligible gibberish, in endless verbiage, and babbling as he tirelessly moved his left hand to accompany unusual proliferation of their faces.

His performance was, above all, fruit of the ease and agility; the most absurd and extraordinary situations sprouted with wonderful simplicity. Mario Moreno not elapse to the history of cinematographic art a few films that do not have, to tell the truth, nothing extraordinary, but, on the other hand, his character, his figure, his personal interpretive style and his unique sense of humor already, occupied by its own merits, a relevant place in the firmament of the seventh art.

His drooping pants, careless and tacky appearance became the standard Spanish of a kind of humor, tinged nonsense, which has, perhaps, its best representatives in the legendary Marx Brothers and which allowed him to achieve a huge popularity in countries from Spanish-speaking, although it put obstacles, simultaneously, their chances of crossing language borders, as , as his film character has already indicated it, had much of the success to his characteristic use of language, a feature that, surprisingly, made it very difficult the penetration of its humor in areas other than the Spanish language.

His exaggerated caricature of the Mexican "pelao" - member of the class low, equivalent to the Madrid Gulf or the "broken"-Chilean, leaning on some panties always about to fall, subject the more times with a PIN, that they seemed to require shouting a belt or a few straps on a pair of shoes made to shreds, a wrinkled shirt (when was it) coming out everywhere a frayed straw hat and a cloth hanging you shoulder, by way of gabardine.

This clothing became the hallmark of his humor and his work, to the extent that disembodied and abandoning the limits of the actor Mario Moreno, went on to set up the television character in a long series of lively, whose face unshaven and miserable drawings estampa correspond either to the of a tramp or a beggar owner , as its creator, of a language fluid, irrepressible and inconsistent, confusing and nonsensical, incomprehensible but essential to get out with it in the most disparate situations.

Considered by many the successor of Charles Chaplin, Cantinflas inherited from him the heart. Only that pelao Mexican, as poor as Charlot, unlike this one, not living haunted by poverty and were allowed the luxury to sympathize with the brilliant.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas