The Gay Desperado

If "Love Me Tonight" is "the musical for people who don't like musicals", it has to be said that "The Gay Desperado" is definitely not a musical for people who don't like opera. In fact -- despite apparently being based on a comic operetta -- it is not really a musical at all but a spoof bandit story with interpolated unrelated arias to show off the voice of one character; and what a voice it is.

Nino Martini, as the young singer Chivo who joins the bandit troop to get a spot on the radio (no, the plot doesn't make a lot more sense later on either...), has a glorious golden tenor whose style hasn't dated a day since the era when it was recorded. The trillings and warblings of some of his musical contemporaries belong to a bygone fashion, but it's very easy to picture Chivo belting out "Nessun Dorma" to a World Cup crowd and topping the charts in the process. Unfortunately, while he has an engaging grin and a decent dramatic range, he is completely incapable of acting and singing at the same time. The result is that the otherwise rapid-paced film grinds to a shuddering halt every time Chivo lays his hand on his breast and starts to declaim, and the viewer's tolerance of the result is likely to depend on his appreciation of operatic performance.

Aside from this drawback, the film is an enjoyable broad-brush satire on Hollywood conventions and the Mexican bandit stereotype in particular, which achieves the vital goal of all such spoofs in making its characters engaging enough in their own right to hold the viewer's interest when the joke would otherwise have grown stale. The bandit chief and his sidekick have the traditional double-act relationship, there is an enigmatic peon with a carved-teak face, and a spirited heroine (a young Ida Lupino) who performs the generic "you say you hate me but you love me really" routine with a refreshing twist.

Overall the film is entertaining and pretty funny, and I feel I did get my money's-worth -- but it can't be denied that the musical interludes, while admirable in their own way, introduce severe pacing problems.

This film is one of the hidden gems of the 1930's Hollywood studio system. It is a wonderful operetta buffo, a delightful parody of all those Mexican bandito westerns and American gangster films of the early decade. The Mexican stereotypes are a bit painful but they are deliberately exaggerated for this comedy about a Mexican bandit who wants to learn real outlaw lessons from the American gangsters seen on the movie screen. The in-joke is that when we finally do meet those gangster, led by perennial heavy Stanley Fields, he is surrounded by other racketeers that look and act exactly like Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. And that is only one of the numerous little in-jokes in this film. Director Mamoulian's visual style and camera, his use of set-ups and shadows, of bandits riding against the evening sky, is so remarkable that the New York Film Critics gave him the Best Director Award for 1937. The script is witty and as fast paced as any Howard Hawks, especially the inter-play between Carrillo and Harold Huber in what must be his best Hollywood role. He and Mischa Auer as a mute Spanish Indian are delightfully. A real gem produced by Mary Pickford's United Artist company.

While watching this delightful farce, I was surprised to notice that Leo ("Braganza") Carillo's leather cuffs are each decoratively studded with a large swastika. This is, of course, a ubiquitous ancient sacred symbol which had only positive connotations before the Nazis appropriated it, but by the time this movie was made, it certainly had political implications. Was costume designer Omar Kiam merely employing a local graphic motif, or was he slipping in a pro-fascist symbol in the same way that SubGenius sympathizers placed the face of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs almost unnoticeably in the background of David Letterman's and Pee Wee Herman's original stage sets?

In a rather bizarre opening scene, a room full of Mexicans are at the theater watching a gangster film. It's odd because all the men have huge sombreros (hats) on--making it practically impossible for anyone to see the film. Suddenly, a fight breaks out and Leo Carrillo's gang takes on the rest of the audience. In a panic, the theater owner has Chivo (Nino Martini) take the stage and begin singing, as he has an amazingly beautiful tenor voice. The fight stops almost immediately, as everyone (especially Carrillo) is in love with the voice. I usually hate this sort of singing, but I also was amazed--he was that good.

Afterwords, Carrillo announces that Chivo MUST join his gang--or else. Given little choice, Chivo agrees and the next thing you know, Carrillo and his gang take over a local radio station and force everyone to listen to Chivo's operatic stylings! As the gang makes a getaway (after all, the police are coming), the come upon two young people and kidnap them (one, by the way, is a young Ida Lupino, who plays Jane). Chivo is smitten with Jane and makes an amazingly awkward play for her--it's a scene you just have to see to believe.

In the meantime, Carrillo goes in search of an American bandit, Butch. Carrillo mistakenly thinks that American bandits are like the ones featured in gangster films and wants Butch to teach them how to act like these film crooks! So how does all this get resolved? Does Chivo get to leave the gang? What about Lupino and her now ex-boyfriend? And does the gang become more Americanized--with gang members who act more like Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson? Tune in yourself to this silly yet strangely enjoyable B-movie.

Pluses are Nino Martini's amazing voice, cute supporting characters and a light and silly atmosphere. Minuses are Nino Martini's almost constant singing--a little went a very long way. In addition, the script is basically fluff. Enjoyable fluff, but still fluff.

This is, as others have pointed out, a lovely film in many ways.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the Tucson, AZ landscape as it was some 80 years ago. This appears to have been filmed in the area in which Columbia Pictures built a whole 1860s town for the movie "Arizona." On a personal note, I can look eastward from my back yard and recognize the mountains and the terrain that has been preserved as a county park.

The correction I need to make is the use in various reviews of the Spanglish non-word "bandito" (created to rhyme with the product name Frito) in every place where the correct word, readily found in any Spanish dictionary, would be "bandido."