Macario Film Analysis

The Golden Age of Mexican cinema (1936-1959) produced great films that not only established a national identity, but also helped to spread Catholicism through movies such as Macario (1961), by Roberto Gavaldón, and Salón México (1949), by Antonio Díaz Conde. The film, Macario, follows the story of a man named Macario, a peasant who struggles with his family to survive poverty. After Macario shares with Death one of his most awaited meals, Death rewards Macario with the ability to tell who will die and how to cure those who are sick. Salón México focuses on Mercedes, a woman who works in a cabaret in order to keep her sister, Beatriz, at a private school. At one point, Mercedes wins a dancing contest with Paco, a thief and womanizer obsessed

Though the Mexican Revolution aimed to end this church-state relationship, many revolutionaries became elites and admitted their conservatism after the revolution. For these reasons, when President Plutarco Elás Calles tried to create an anticlerical state, people defended their beliefs during the Cristero War, demonstrating that lower-class Mexican communities was still attached to Catholicism. Thus, when the cinema efforts for “National Unity” and the homogeneity of lo Mexicano began (Mraz 107), many films were influenced by religious elements (Evans 5-20). Therefore, I will argue that the visual and content-based depictions of religion in Macario and in Salón México are examples of how the spread of Mexico’s Catholic religion formed part of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema’s nationalistic project by portraying it as a non-present power, a daily-life ritual, and by assimilating it with pre-colonial traditions. This is important because the Golden Age helped to shape Mexican identity and can lead us to understand why México has the largest Catholic

Passages from the Bible suggest that women have to completely submit to male authority and follow the example of the Virgin Mary, or the Virgen de Guadalupe, who was submissive to God, a male figure. At the same time, marianismo, the belief “that women are semi-divine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men,” (Evans 40) is an idea supported by Catholicism and justified through the Bible. This ideology compensates women for the limitations suffered due to male dominance (Evans 40-41). Macario’s wife is an example of marianismo by representing the Virgin Mary, the suffered mother who does everything she can to keep her family together and happy. Even though Macario’s wife steals a turkey, she does so in order to fulfill her husband’s wish despite her personal desire to also have something all for herself. She continues to do as her husband says even though she is skeptical about her husband’s abilities to cure and fears the consequences--she submits herself to the dominance of her husband. The role of Macario’s wife follows traditional patriarchal views of women as sacrificial and forgiving, a role associated with the Virgin Mary and expected from women. On the other hand, though Macario does not symbolizes a specific character, his morals are judged through a Catholic point of view. At the