Photo caption, Silvia Pinal was considered “the last great diva of Mexico.”Item information
- Author, Alberto Nájar
- Author’s title, BBC News World
-
56 minutes
“I chose Buñel, not he me.” That’s what the Mexican actress Silvia Pinal boasted about years ago.
“I fell in love with his cinema, his black humor, his way of being and I knew that I would not rest until I was directed by him and I achieved it,” she said in an interview with the newspaper La Jornada.
It was a surprising statement that is remembered now that his death is reported.
Pinal told the story of how “Viridiana” was filmed in 1961, one of the Spanish filmmaker’s masterpieces and the first Mexican film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival.
Pinal died this Thursday at the age of 94 in Mexico City where she had been hospitalized since November 21 for a urinary infection.
In her autobiography “This is me. Silvia Pinal”, the actress recalled that the filming was a kind of wedding gift from her then husband, businessman Gustavo Alatriste.
The couple traveled to Spain to contact Buñuel, whom they found in his hometown of Calanda, in the province of Teruel. Pinal introduced them.
“And who is he, producer, director?” he asked. The actress responded: “No, Don Luis, he is my husband and he is a furniture maker.”
Intrigued, Buñuel insisted: why would a furniture salesman want to make movies?
“Because he loves me,” was the response. “Ah,” said the director. “It’s a very good reason.”
Alatriste paid 150,000 pesos to the filmmaker for the film. That was his wedding gift for his wife.
And “Viridiana” is the film for which she will be most remembered and the one that established her as an actress.
Silvia Pinal was considered “the last great diva of Mexico” and among the reasons for the definition, the films “Viridiana”, “The Exterminating Angel” and “Simón del Desierto” stand out.
She was one of the actresses who filmed the most with the Spanish filmmaker.
In Mexico they called her “Buñuel’s muse.”
seductive
Pinal was born in 1931 in the port of Guaymas, Sonora, in the northwest of the country.
Because of her father’s job, a former military man, she lived in several places before settling permanently in Mexico City, where at the age of 14 she got her first job as a secretary in a pharmaceutical laboratory.
Caption, “I chose Buñel, not he me,” said the Mexican actress.
In 1948, he debuted in his first film with a small role in “Bamba”, and from that moment on he filmed more than 100 films in Mexico and other countries.
Silvia Pinal was a versatile actress: she played both a naive spoiled girl from a wealthy family and seductive women looking to conquer millionaire men.
Her filmography abounds in light or commercial-style comedies, with which she obtained several awards and made her very popular in Mexico.
According to specialists, it had a central role in the style of cinema that was born in the 1950s and whose most frequent theme was stories developed in cities, unlike other periods when the scripts were based mainly on country life. .
It was a different context that also required other types of actresses.
“More than countryside, suburb or neighborhood they should suggest a more sophisticated, overflowing sensuality,” wrote historian Felipe Mera in the Veredas magazine of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).
It was an image that caused controversy.
In 1961, for example, Spain’s government led by Francisco Franco banned the exhibition of “Viridiana” after the Italian newspaper L’Osservatore Romano called it “blasphemous.”
Pinal said that the Spanish authorities ordered all copies of the tape to be confiscated, but friends of the actress buried a couple in her garden and she herself smuggled three others to Mexico.
That is why it was possible for “Viridiana” to be exhibited in Latin America.
Political life
Although many in Mexico especially highlight the beauty of Silvia Pinal, there are also other moments that are now remembered.
Photo caption, Pinal was general secretary of the National Association of Performers, the National Association of Actors and promoter of musical works in theaters in the country.
One of them is the period between 1991 and 2000 when the actress was successively a federal representative, an assembly member of the Federal District and a senator, always nominated by the then ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
During that period, he promoted some legislation that had little success, such as a proposal to toughen sanctions on the resale of show tickets, and modifications to the Cinematography Law.
She was also general secretary of the National Association of Interpreters, the National Association of Actors and promoter of musical works in theaters in the country.
He also starred in several controversies. In 2000 she had to go into exile for almost a year in Miami, because in Mexico she was accused of embezzling funds from the National Association of Theater Producers (Protea), which she founded.
The paradox of the name Viridiana
The personal appearance of the last diva of Mexico was not so successful.
Caption, One of his most famous films was “The Exterminating Angel” in 1963, where he appeared alongside Augusto Benedicto.
For several years Silvia Pinal suffered from glaucoma that forced her to cancel performances and stay away from the stage for a time.
But the most serious thing happened with his family. One of his daughters, rock singer Alejandra Guzmán, nearly died from complications from poorly performed plastic surgery.
Previously, in 1982, another of his daughters, Viridiana, 18 years old, had died in a car accident in Mexico City.
Five years later his granddaughter died in the pool of his house. The 2-year-old girl had the same name as her aunt.
It was one of the greatest paradoxes for the actress: Viridiana, the name that represented glory in her career, was also the greatest pain in her life.
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