From the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Mexican cinema emerged as the most successful Latin American film industry and the leading Spanish-language cinema globally. While many films from this Golden Age followed Hollywood's model, a notable group of filmmakers, including Fernando de Fuentes, Emilio Fernández, and Luis Buñuel, sought to create a distinctly Mexican cinema. They aimed to tell stories in ways that were authentically national. The Classical Mexican Cinema explores the development of this unique cinematic aesthetic, designed to express lo mexicano. Charles Ramírez Berg traces the classical style's roots to popular Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada in the early twentieth century and examines the emergence of Mexican classicism in Enrique Rosas' El Automóvil Gris, a pivotal film in the silent era that paved the way for Golden Age cinema. He then analyzes the works of key Golden Age auteurs over three decades, utilizing neoformalism and neoauteurism within a cultural studies framework. Berg reveals how Classical Mexican Cinema deviated from Golden Age norms to convey a distinctly Mexican sensibility in its themes, style, and ideology.
