One someoccasions hears lamented the 10dency of flicks to depict Mexico — and in particular, its capital Mexico Town — as a dangerening, rough-and-tumble position the place human lifestyles has no value. Such concerns grow to be close toly as outdated as cinema itself, having first been raised in accordance with a coarsely thirty-second-long movie known as Duel au pistolet from 1896. The French name owes to its having a French director: Gabriel Veyre, a contemporary of the cinema-pioneering Lumière brothers who first left France for Latin America so as to display their early motion pictures there.
On his travels, Veyre each exhibited Lumière motion pictures and made his personal. “Between 1896 and 1897, he directed and professionalduced 35 motion pictures in Mexico,” writes Jared Wheeler at Moviegoings. “Lots of the ones motion pictures feature the Mexican president Porfirio Díaz in daily activities.” The motion captured in Duel au pistolet is “maximum probably a recreation of a well-known duel that had taken position in September 1894, between Colonel Francisco Romero and Jose Verástegui, the submitmaster general.” It kind of feels that Romero had overheard Verástegui accusing him of now not handiest sleeping with a mutual good friend’s spouse, but in addition of having pulled strings to get that very same good friend a submit within the government.
His honor insulted, Romero call fored that Verástegui settle the matter with pistols in Chapultepercent Park. Via that point, dueling was once a technically illegal however still-common practice, one “governed by means of a complex system of social norms that have been, for some, a supply of countryal satisfaction as an indication of Mexico’s modernity, and of its familysend with other European international locations like France.” But when a duel have been to be re-created and screened on movie out of its cultural contextual content, “would other international locations recognize it as an honorin a position, dignified ritual, or simply see it as an indication that each and everyday lifestyles in Mexico was once characterized by means of violence and barbarism?”
What nonetheless galvanizees about Duel au pistolet (a colorized version of which seems above), close toly 130 years after its debut, is much less the impression it offers of Mexico than its superstartling actualism, which has given even some modern-day viewers reason to gainedder whether or not it’s actually a re-enactment. Many “have commented at the naturalism of the duelist’s loss of life,” Wheeler writes, “some of the first to be depicted on display and really a lot in contrast to the melodramatic taste that was once extra typical of this time.” In actual lifestyles, it was once Verástegui who misplaced, and Romero’s subsequent trial and imprisonment supposed that Mexico’s days of dueling have been neatly and truly numbered — however the history of onscreen violence had handiest simply begun.
Related content:
The Ultimate Duel Took Position in France in 1967, and It’s Stuck on Movie
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and largecasts on towns, language, and culture. His initiatives come with the Substack newsletter Books on Towns and the ebook The Statemuch less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceebook.
