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As in the case of Pro Patria (Guillermo Calles, 1932), this movie is anything but lost. Sadly, original negatives for both films are in the vaults of the same private archive in California, unattainable for researchers and film lovers.

Hopefully, those valuable old nitrate negatives will be made available before they are lost completely to nitrate decomposition.

Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho was the second color feature film and the first fantasy film for children made in Mexico. A few sources catalog this movie as an animated color film, and that is wrong; though characters and settings belong to the fairy tale world, players are actual people.

This movie is a good example of how Mexican film industry was a melting pot, where talents from several countries and fields of activity contributed to production.  In this particular case, several famous Spanish exiles[1] and other Spaniards, as well as an ex-Hollywood cinematographer, joined Mexican artists and technicians to make the film.

CIMESA produced the film. Its partners were Gonzalo Elvira y Rumayor, Mexican, and Miguel Mezquíriz, Spanish.

Carlos Véjar Jr. wrote the script, based on a play written by exiles Salvador Bartolozzi and his partner Magda Donato[2], heads of INBA’s[3] child theater program. Bartolozzí’s original illustrations and designs for the stage inspired the movie’s sets, costumes, and make-up.

Véjar –who had already experience in color film- also directed, and Roberto Gavaldón assisted him.

Salvador Bartolozzi was a versatile artist. He outstood as illustrator, cartoonist, publisher; theater art director, and costume designer in his native Spain; moreover, he had a reputation as an innovator of children literature and theater. He wrote for children under the motto “mejorar divirtiendo”

Magda Donato collaborated with Bartolozzi in many of his projects. She was an accomplished intellectual, journalist, literary translator, and actress. At 14 years old, she would already write short stories for newspapers and magazines. A pair of Texas periodicals published a few of her stories when she was still a teenager, and then in the 1940s[4].  She was part of the “Generación del 27”. 

Mexican Carlos Toussaint and Spanish exile Vicente Petit shared the production design responsibilities.  Petit, famous as artist and decorator in Spain, made his debut in Mexico with this film.

                               

Composer Juan García Esquivel took charge of musical direction. Years later, he became famous in the United States as “the King of Spage Age Pop.” 

The legendary Francisco Gabilondo Soler Cri-Cri created and performed some of the songs, and also dubbed animal characters.

Ross Fisher, formerly of Hollywood, was the director of photography. In 1936, he had his first experience with color film (Los siete cabritos y el lobo, animated film produced and directed by Roberto A. Morales in 1936).

Producers opted for a color system invented by a Mexican for Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho.  The negative later went to the Cinecolor lab in Burbank, California, for developing. Producer Elvira personally supervised the processing of the film.

The cast included both Mexican and Spanish actors. The Spanish were: Francisco Jambrina, Alicia Rodríguez (exile), Amparo Villegas, Enrique García Álvarez (exile), and Maruja Grifell.  Among the Mexican were: Martha Ofelia Galindo, José Elías Moreno, Daniel Pastor, Lucille Bowling, Daniel Pastor, Raúl Guerrero, and Hernán Vera.

Alicia Rodríguez and Martha Ofelia Galindo were child actresses, both involved in INBA’s theater programs.  The two followed brilliant careers on stage, film, and television, and were active until recently.  Taking part in this film brought good opportunities to Alicia and Martha Ofelia.  The latter was even called for auditions at the MGM studios in New York in 1944[5], while Alicia won a Mexican Academy award in 1945, for El secreto de la solterona.

Carlos Véjar Jr., the director, is worth a mention too. He outstood as illustrator and cartoonist; he even worked at Walt Disney studios for some time. In the film industry, he explored screenplay writing, production, direction, title designing, and acting. He was the first Mexican filmmaker in making a 3D movie, El corazón y la espada (in 1953, with codirector Edward Dein).

With the collaboration of such array of talents, it is not surprising that Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho got praises by several film reporters and critics. That is the case of Hortensia Elizondo[6].  Her review of the movie[7] is reproduced verbatim as follows. It reveals some unknown details about the film:

México, D.F., Abril de 1943.- He aquí una preciosa película a colores –lo mejor

que se ha logrado hasta hoy en México- que, según rezan los anuncios, es para niños de cinco a cien años. Y en verdad que no sólo el mundo infantil puede divertirse y gustar de este cuento tan deliciosamente filmado. Por la forma como fue llevado a la hoja blanca el célebre personaje, por los colores primorosos, por los sets de encanto y la actuación plena de gracia de todos sus intérpretes, esta película interesa y deleita a grandes y chicos por igual. Tiene “Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho” todo el encanto y la infantil dulzura de las cintas de muñecos animados que ha llevado a la pantalla el genial Walt Disney. Sólo que aquí se trata de muñecos de carne y hueso que se mueven, ríen y hablan entre sets multicolores de maravilla, como los forjó nuestra imaginación infantil cuando en la niñez leyéramos algún cuento de hadas.

Pero decimos mal: más que un paralelo con la “Blanca Nieves” o el “Dumbo” de Walt Disney, podríamos comparar a “Cucuruchito y Pinocho” con aquella linda película que hiciera hace algunos años del cuento de Maeterlinck “El pájaro azul”[8]. Sin apasionamiento alguno, esta cinta nuestra que acaba de idear y dirigir tan acertadamente Carlos Véjar Jr. no tiene nada qué pedirle en técnica, en colores, en sets, en actuación a “El pájaro azul” de la bonísima Shirley. Puede felicitarse el cine nacional de haber hecho algo totalmente nuevo en nuestra historia fílmica y logrado en forma tan digna y tan encomiable.

Tiene a su cargo el papel principal de “Pinocho” un buen actor, Francisco Jambrina, que ya se ha distinguido por sus magníficas actuaciones, pero en quien nunca sospechamos aptitudes para encarnar con gracia y delicadeza el papel de un muñeco animado. Jambrina triunfa rotundamente y se capta la simpatía del público menor y mayor.

Su graciosa indumentaria y su maquillaje contribuyen grandemente a dar más atractivo al personaje. Y con Jambrina nos dan la sorpresa dos lindas chiquillas debutantes en la pantalla, Martha Ofelia Galindo que desempeña el papel de la duquesa Cucuruchito; y Alicia Rodríguez que tiene a su cargo el de “Pipa”, la gatita de Pinocho. Nada tienen qué pedirle a los niños actores de Hollywood estas dos preciosas criaturas que actúan y dicen sus “líneas” como si se tratase de actrices consumadas. Graciosas, naturales, desenvueltas, estas dos niñitas son una verdadera adquisición en las filas infantiles del cine nacional. Amparo Villegas interpreta a la nana “Cucufata”; Enrique [García] Álvarez al duque padre de Cucuruchito; Maruja Grifell a la bruja Pirulí; J. Elías Moreno al villano Pata Pufo; y dos actores más cuyos nombres sentimos no recordar, al “Rey Betún” y a la “Reina Chocolate”.

Y todos, hasta los preciosos pequeñines que hacen de duendecillos de la bruja, están tan admirablemente bien que encantan y deleitan, cada uno dentro del papel que le tocó desempeñar. Es como si un sueño infantil hubiese tomado forma y viéramos a los personajes queridos de la niñez en persona. Verdaderamente encantadores todos ellos.

[Francisco] Gabilondo Soler, el famoso “Cri Cri”, grillito cantor del radio, tiene a su cargo la sincronización de las canciones y las “líneas”que tienen que “decir” los animalitos del cuento así como el pavoroso dragón.

Recomendamos muy sinceramente a “Cucuruchito y Pinocho” como algo deliciosamente encantador para grandes y chicos. No dudamos en catalogar esta película como un acierto del cine nacional.

Some sources affirm that the producers and distributors had problems with Walt Disney because he claimed “Pinocchio” –the character and the name- was his intellectual property.  We have not found documents that prove the conflict, but the sources are most probably right.  At any rate, Salvador Bartolozzi created the “el Pinocho español” (the Spanish Pinocchio) in the middle 1910s, long before Disney became involved in the film industry.

In spite of any problem, Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho was distributed and exhibited in Texas in 1944, 1945 and 1946.  It ran successfully in Cuba, where it premiered at the Teatro Payret, in la Habana, on October 1-10, 1943.  The movie arrived in Spain in 1945, and countless theaters exhibited it.  Spanish audiences had not forgotten Bartolozzi and Donato.

Color fantasy film production was abandoned in Mexico after the making of Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho. Fifteen years later, CLASA and director René Cardona revived the trend with Pulgarcito.

We believe rescuing every extant film is worth the effort, since any film footage is a witness of history, both of motion picture and of culture. In the case of Las aventuras de Cucuruchito y Pinocho, that is particulary true, as it stands as:

And the most important thing, children from 5 to 100, as the original film publicity claimed, would have a great time watching it.

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[1] Due to the Second Republic’s defeat in the Spanish Civil War.

[2] Née Carmen Eva Nelken Mansberger.

[3] Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes – National Fine Arts Institute.

[4] Published in Spanish-language periodicals: ‘Revista Mexicana’, ‘La Época’, and ‘La Prensa’, all of San Antonio.

[5] As proved by the temporary immigration manifest signed by Martha’s mother, dated on October 7, 1944, and kept at the NARA in microfilm.

[6] Hortensia Elizondo Cisneros (1908-1953), Mexican writer and film reporter.

[7] “Una preciosa película a colores” (published in La Prensa, San Antonio, Texas, on April 11, 1943).

[8] The Blue Bird (Walter Lang, 1940), film nominated for two Academy Awards.