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The Extra (1962 film)
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Wikipedia article
'The Extra' (Spanish: 'El extra') is a 1962 Mexican comedy film directed by Miguel M. Delgado and starring Cantinflas and Alma Delia Fuentes. In the film, Cantinflas plays a man who works as an extra through several films.Garca Riera, p. 285 This was the last Cantinflas film whose art direction was made by long-time set designer Gunther Gerzso.
Plot
Rogaciano (Cantinflas) is the modest worker of a Mexican film studio, who performs several roles as an extra in the films shot there. His excessive zeal at work causes the antipathy of successive directors who do not support his forays into their films. After his run-ins into film sets, he dreams that he is the protagonist of each of the productions of which he has participated, such as him playing a 'sans-culotte' and saving Marie Antoinette in a film about the French Revolution, being the lover of Marguerite Gautier in a retelling of 'La Dame aux Camlias' in which she survives, and saving a maiden from an Aztec sacrifice by fighting a warrior (defeating him by fighting him as if it were a bullfight) in an Aztec film.
In one of the productions Rogaciano is in, he meets Rosita (Alma Delia Fuentes), a young woman who also works as an extra, who is initially disappointed in the treatment of the studio workers, who tell her that they don't need more people like her to work there. Rogaciano, seeing the situation of Rosita, who is the guardian of her two younger brothers and has economic deficiencies, helps her to be chosen as an actress in an audition for a blockbuster conducted by the directors of the studio where Rogaciano and Rosita work. After signing Rosita to a contract, the directors, having been made aware of Rosita's relation to Rogaciano, tell her that from now on she must not get involved with him due to Rogaciano's low social status. Rosita is reluctant to this, but Rogaciano learns this and, albeit heartbroken, convinces her to follow through it.
Cast
*Cantinflas as Rogaciano
*Alma Delia Fuentes as Rosa Hernndez "Rosita"
*Carmen Molina as Actress who plays Marguerite Gautier
*Guillermina Tllez Girn as Actress with torta
*Magda Donato as Actress who plays Olympia
*Alejandro Ciangherotti as Director of Aztec scene
*Len Barroso as Film director
*Luis Manuel Pelayo as Director of cowboy scene
*Eric del Castillo as Actor who plays Armand Duval (as J.E. Eric del Castillo)
*Guillermo Rivas as Actor who plays villain on French Revolution scene
*Antonio Raxel as Director of 'La Dame aux Camlias' scene
*Armando Arriola as Doctor
*Gerardo del Castillo as Mr. Menndez (as Gerardo del Castillo Jr.)
*Edmundo Espino as Don Julin
*Valentin Trujillo as Chevo, Rosa's brother (as Valentin Trujillo Gazcon)
*Adrin Gallardo
*Chabelo as Panchito (as Javier Lopez Rodriguez "Chabelo")
*Antonio Bravo as Aztec film producer
*Manuel Alvarado as Fat seamster
*Alberto Catal as Assistant Director
*Enrique Lucero as Actor who plays Aztec priest
*Ral Meraz as Actor who plays French Revolution soldier
*Roy Fletcher as Assistant Director of 'La Dame aux Camlias' scene
*Yolanda Ciani as Lilia, actress in cowboy scene
*Jos Carlos Mndez as Cuco, Rosa's brother
*Katherine George
*Erika Carlsson as Actress who plays Marie Antoinette (Toita) (as Erika Carlson)
*Arya Morales
*Jorge Casanova as Assistant Director of Aztec scene
*Armando Gutirrez as Don Matas
*Gabriel lvarez
*Arturo Cobo as "Frank Sinatra"
*Irma Serrano as Lady at audition
*Armando Acosta as Studio employee (uncredited)
*Marco Antonio Arzate as Actor in cowboy scene (uncredited)
*Felipe de Flores as Actor who plays Captain (uncredited)
*Jos Luis Fernndez as Actor in cowboy scene (uncredited)
*Nathanael Len as Villain in cowboy scene (uncredited)
*Rubn Mrquez as Martnez, studio employee (uncredited)
*Fernando Yapur as Douglas (uncredited)
Analysis
Professor Jeffrey M. Pilcher, on 'Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity', argued that in the film, Cantinflas "continued to perpetuate" a theme from his previous films of "helping beautiful young women live fairy tales,"Pilcher, p. 190 and that during his character's dream sequence about the French Revolution, Cantinflas "preached a conservative view of national history" by "inserting referentes to Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution within a monarchist speech in defense of Marie Antoinette and respect for a traditional, hierarchical society."Pilcher, p. 191
In popular culture
The film is referenced in the Colombian novel 'rase una vez en Colombia (Comedia romntica y El espantapjaros)' by Ricardo Silva Romero.Silva Romero, p. 76
References
Bibliography
*Garca Riera, Emilio. 'Historia documental del cine mexicano: 1961'. Ediciones Era, 1969.
*Pilcher, Jeffrey M. 'Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity'. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
*Silva Romero, Ricardo. 'rase una vez en Colombia (Comedia romntica y El espantapjaros)'. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Colombia, 2013.
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