Interesting Movie

There lived a shoe shine man who had a way with words. He shined shoes in Chapultepec Park. When asked a question, he never quite answered the question but gave a long, convoluted, rambling speech that sounded as if he was answering the question but in reality he isn't. His friend, a brick layer, falls from a high floor of a building and dies. He leaves behind a wife and a son. After the funeral, the wife moves to Guadalajara from Mexico City to reconcile with her parents and leaves the young boy with the friend (compadre.) 

The boy has a beautiful and caring teacher that convinces the friend to come to classes. The friend is smitten with the teacher. The boy has one wish of obtaining a ball and nightly prays for God to grant his wish. The friend and boy go to Acapulco and the friend gets involved in many silly antics. He dances with a sexy dancer to Ravel's Bolero. In the movie there is a play on words because a shoe shine person is referred to as Bolero. Then, Ravel's Bolero is played while a young, sexy woman dances and Cantinflas joins her. He also dives off the cliff and a hotel owner is impressed with the dive and hires him to be a life guard not knowing that the friend does not know how to swim. The hotel owner ends up firing the life guard.

The friend and the boy return to Mexico City and the friend goes to a store to buy the boy the biggest and best ball he can find. The ball is put into a box and when the friend returns home, he finds the boy's mother and her fiance ready to take the boy and return to Guadalajara. The mother has also purchased a ball for her son and the son is happy that he now has the ball he always wanted.

The friend places the box with the ball on the chair, says good-bye to the boy, tears flow, and he is depressed and sad. He goes to  Chapultepec Park where the teacher sees him. He tells her about the ball and how he has no one to give the ball to and she hints that their children can play with the ball. The movie ends with them kissing.


After seeing the Cantinflas movie in theaters currently showing, I wanted to see a movie with Mario Moreno and to see why he was so famous. This movie is called El Bolero de Raquel and was put out by Columbia Pictures in 1957. The movie is in color and since I had never seen a Cantinflas movie as an adult, I found it entertaining. The movies I remember seeing as a child were in black and white and Cantinflas seemed to do a lot of silly, slap stick type comedy. This movie, even with all the silliness, touches the heart. I realized that his puns and his clever play on words in Spanish would be very difficult to translate into English.

The Spanish actor, Oscar Jaenada, who plays Cantinflas in the current movie does a tremendous job of portraying Cantinflas. The dance scene with Ravel's Bolero is shown at the end of the movie while the credits are running and I do not know if it was taken from El Bolero de Raquel or if Jaenada recreates the scene. I may have to go see the movie again now that I am becoming a fan of Cantinflas.

"A camel is like a man,

it can go for days without

eating or drinking."

How are they the same?

"A man can drink and

go for days without eating."

Cantinflas