Cantinflas is alive!
Galatview : Staff
In honor of Cantinflas birthday on August 12, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is debuting with famous titles featuring the legendary comic through their Sony Pictures Choice Collection.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the Sony Pictures Choice Collection is a manufacture-on-demand service featuring never-before-released on DVD titles from more than 75 years of the Columbia Pictures film library.
The Cantinflas titles are:
Barrendero (1982)
Don Napo (Cantinflas, Around the World in Eighty Days) is a city maintenance worker, sweeping up dirt while dancing, singing and flirting with the maids in the neighborhood. One day, Don Napo comes across an abandoned baby in his garbage; the next day, a valuable painting appears in his trashcan. A series of wild events leads Don Napo to face crooked criminals, and he’ll need the help of all of his friends to take them down and save the day!
Conserje En Condominio (1974)
Úrsulo (Cantinflas, Around the World in Eighty Days) is a fast-talking wisecracker who finagles his way into a job as the manager of an upscale apartment building where each tenant is crazier than the last! Dealing with psychics, quarreling couples and young hipsters causing trouble throughout the building, Úrsulo handles everything with wisdom, creativity and humor. While dealing with many issues in the building, he meets Clodomira (Raquel Olmedo, Los Indolentes), a maid for one of the rich women in the building, and they find themselves falling for each other.
Don Quijote Cabalga de Nuevo (1973)
Loosely based on the legendary novel by Miguel de Cervantes, this film follows the adventures of Don Quijote (Fernando Fernán Gómez, All About My Mother) and his faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza (Cantinflas, Around the World in Eighty Days). Don Quijote goes from village to village with Sancho, often on a misguided quest to honor the knight’s confused sense of chivalry, thus leading them into hilarious situations and getting the duo into constant trouble.
ABOUT CANTINFLAS:
Mario Moreno, aka “Cantinflas” created a simple, universal character whose roundabout phrases and meaningless speeches confounded those around him, but delighted Spanish-speaking audiences for decades. “Cantinflas,” whom the legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin dubbed “the funniest man in the world,” began his career in the 1930s in the “carpas” (tent shows) in Mexico City. After early attempts to find his comedic voice, he embraced his own heritage as a lowly slum dweller and audiences enthusiastically endorsed this comic persona. With his tiny mustache tipping the corner of his mouth, a cockeyed cap over dark, disheveled hair, dirty vest and a rope for a belt, Cantinflas became the idol of the masses by satirizing the police and politicians.
As a pioneer in the Mexican film industry, he helped usher in its golden era. His foray into American cinema landed him a Golden Globe as Best Actor for his role in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but his comedic presence shined brightest in his Spanish language films. People everywhere identified with the struggles of this winsome ragamuffin, and when he died in 1993, thousands endured a violent downpour in order to touch his casket as it lay in state. His funeral was a national event, lasting three days and attended by the presidents of Mexico, Peru, and El Salvador, and the United States Senate held a moment of silence for him.
