El señor fotógrafo (1953)

One of the mid-to-early, but not quite so memorable Cantinflas comedies; still a far cry from the preachiness of his later works, but hardly among those considered classics.

Mario Moreno 'Cantinflas' plays a gluttonous, lazy, crooked, flirty (with young, attractive females) and rude (with the unattractive) studio assistant who is fired when he goes too far.

Why wasn't he fired before?

He goes into business by himself at a local park only to encounter a chemist (Ángel Garasa) who has reverted to childish, violent behavior upon receiving a blow to the head during a kidnapping attempt, and who now has no memory of his previous life as the inventor of a tiny hand-held bomb, (which results in a comic, but much less than spectacular explosion,) in which a shady figure from the American underworld is interested.

He is hired to take care of the escaped 'madman' until his mental faculties are able to be recovered.

In the meantime, he romantically pursues a beauty shop worker (Rosita Arenas,) among others.

When at the sanatorium the inmates' hallucinations are accompanied by surreal sound effects: When invisible plates are 'dropped' they fall to the floor with a crash; an imaginary game of billiards and a card game also have suitable sound effects.

I recently viewed that episode of The Abbot and Costello Show where Lou has insomnia and much the same happens when he is sent out for treatment. There, it was obviously simply a vaudeville routine recreated for television; but it's more difficult to say for sure that the same applies to the Cantinflas movie.

The print is very nice looking (some of those earlier films don't fare nearly as well.)

The double feature DVD is un-subtitled which is unfortunate for non-Spanish speakers since most of the humor is wordplay based.

Cantinflas famously relied on confusing double-talk, twisting of popular and low-brow phrases and cleverly hidden double entendres (one which had me googling to try and figure out its popular origins or exactly what was being meant,) in order to work his way out of tight spots; not quite what Groucho Marx would do but certainly to the same general effect.

Cantiflas was also a fine physical comedian, but other than a concluding donnybrook involving the gangsters and a post-explosion group of cops there is little of it on display here.

The film also features many of the performers he would work with till late in his career. Psychotronic Films readers will recognize Wolf Ruvinskis who infamously played the character Neutrón in droopy pants.