El gendarme desconocido (“The Unknown Policeman”)
Directed by Miguel M. Delgado
Written by Miguel M. Delgado, José F. Elizondo, and Jaime Salvador
1941/Mexico
Posa Films
First viewing/Mill Creek Entertainment DVD
Among the things that endeared Cantinflas to his public was his comic use of language in his films. His character would strike up a normal conversation and then complicate it to the point where no one understood what they were talking about. This manner of talking became known as Cantinflada, and it became common parlance for Spanish speakers to say “¡estás cantinfleando!” (loosely translated as you’re pulling a “Cantinflas!” or you’re “Cantinflassing!”) whenever someone became hard to understand in conversation. The Real Academia Española officially included the verb, cantinflear, cantinflas and cantinflada in its dictionary in 1992.
This was my introduction to the famous Mexican comic. I don’t think his humor translates too well.
A laybaout (Catinflas) accidentally traps some notorious bank robbers and is rewarded by being made Agente 777 on the police force. He gets into one scrape after another driving his chief nuts. But when the King of Diamonds is coming to town the Commandante insists that 777 is the only man to impersonate the man at a posh hotel. The illiterate agent is a fish out of water and gets involved in even more mishaps but his luck holds out in the end.
I wanted to see the man Chaplin once called the world’s best comedian and this is said to be one of his best films. Cantinflas was not annoying to me like some others but I didn’t get any laughs out of this either. So many of the gags are based on his inane and pointless stories and I think the subtitles did not capture the humor.
Clip (no subtitles)
