Animas Trujano (El hombre importante) ("The Important Man") is a 1962 film from Mexico directed by Ismael Rodriguez.
Toshiro Mifune stars as the title character, Animas Trujano, a poor peasant in Oaxaca. He is a loser and generally just an asshole: a drunkard, a shiftless alcoholic, a man who hits his children and his wife Juana and who openly cheats on Juana with the town bicycle, Catalina. He's also rather bitter about his station in life, which in fairness is not all his fault: he is illiterate and also a Zapotec indigenous person, in a Mexico where indigenous peoples are the victims of racism from the Spanish-blooded elite.
Animas has a dream, to pay for one of the festivals for his village's patron saint, which would earn him the title of "mayordomo" and, he hopes, the respect of town. But that would require hard work, and Animas is still a lazy, shiftless alcoholic who never takes responsibility for his problems. So he decides to sell his soul to the Devil.
And yes, Toshiro Mifune, Japan's most famous actor, starred in a Mexican film. It was Mifune's first film outside of Japan. He learned his dialogue phonetically, but after it was decided his accent was just too unconvincing, the dialogue was dubbed.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Animas spends most of the movie either drunk or trying to get drunk. The first thing he does in the morning, after he awakens in his family's crude shack, is look for his bottle of liquor. When he gets a job in a mezcal distillery, he drinks straight from the tap on a barrel of mezcal, and as a result loses his job.
- Animal Reaction Shot: A donkey stares at Animas, and then brays, as he drinks mezcal at the distillery by guzzling it from the tap.Animas: What do you care?
- Beastly Bloodsports: Cockfighting is a favorite pastime in the village. Animas bets the money he stole from his wife on cockfighting, and wins—but because he's a moron he pushes his luck and loses it all.
- Brownface: Toshiro Mifune, a Japanese, playing a Mexican, and a dark-skinned Zapotec at that.
- Chocolate Baby: Inverted, and the reason why Dorotea can't bring along her love child by Belarmino when she goes off with her Zapotec boyfriend. Juana observes correctly that no one will believe her light-skinned baby is the child of her dark-skinned husband.
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: Something one might expect in a Mexican village in the morning when peasants are going to work at the distillery.
- Death of a Child: Animas and Juana's younger son dies in the opening scene. While Juana is weeping at the wake, which in local tradition is supposed to be a party like an Irish wake, Animas tells her to smile and dance. However, a later scene reveals that he's just as broken-hearted as his wife.
- Establishing Character Moment: When he is first seen Animas is swigging from a bottle as his little son lies on a sickbed, gravely ill. Juana pleads with him to get a real doctor instead of the witch doctor that's muttering spells over the boy, but Animas says he won't beg for the money he'd need to pay the doctor. The boy dies.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: The church bell tolls midnight as Animas stands in the graveyard, holding six hens he's going to give to the rooster.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Although one might wonder just how noble it is since the whole situation is his fault in the first place. But at the end, Juana murders Catalina, skewering her with her husband's machete, in broad daylight in front of the whole town. Animas then tells everyone that he did it and he will accept punishment. The film ends with him being led away.
- Large Ham: Mifune was always prone to this and he really goes to town in this film, with grimacing, wild gesticulating, and bug-eyed stares. His Spanish dialogue was delivered by another actor, but it is also over-the-top hammy.
- The Load: Animas isn't just a shiftless alcoholic, he also actively destroys any attempt by Juana to better their situation. Whenever she manages to stash away a spare peso, he steals it and spends it on booze. At some point in the backstory, he forced Juana to sell a plot of land she inherited from her grandfather. While Animas is spending a year in jail, Juana works and works and almost saves up enough money to buy back the land—only for Animas to take it as soon as he gets out and blow it on liquor, gambling, and Catalina.
- Love Triangle:
- There's a subplot in which Dorotea is courted by a brown-skinned Zapotec peasant boy, but is also romanced by rich Don Fermin's son Bernardo.
- And then there's the three-cornered relationship between Animas, his insanely patient wife Juana, and his slutty girlfriend Catalina who will sleep with him whenever he can pay for her company.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Animas, besides being a drunken lout, is also both extremely superstitious and extremely stupid. The witch doctor tells him that if he gives six chickens to a magic rooster in the graveyard at midnight, he'll get a lot of money. When no money comes, Juana scornfully tells him that she saw the witch doctor in the market, selling their six chickens. However, as soon as the words leave her lips, Don Fermin shows up at their shack and offers them a fat wad of cash—if they sell the don's grandson to him.
- Never Learned to Read: Animas's illiteracy is both part of the reason why he's poor and part of his massive inferiority complex. He resents the fact that Juana can read and write.
- The Peeping Tom: The women at the mezcal distillery squeeze out the agave juice by stomping on the agave hearts inside a big vat, which means they have to wash afterwards. Belarmino, son of Don Fermin the distillery owner, peeps on the women while they bathe.
- The Rival: Tadeo, whom Animas hates for the simple fact that he is successful and respected and everything that Animas isn't. Part of the reason that Animas wants so badly to put on a festival and be a mayordomo is that Tadeo was once.
- Rule of Three: Naturally the "golden rooster" has to crow three times at midnight before Animas can give the six chickens as an offering.
- Really Gets Around: Animas's younger daughter describes Catalina as "the woman who kisses the men." She doesn't seem to actually be a prostitute but she is definitely willing to spend time with men who will spend money on her, like she does with Animas when he steals his wife's nest egg.
- Same Language Dub: Mifune delivered his lines phonetically, but after his accent was judged to be too distracting all his dialogue was overdubbed.
- What Does She See in Him?: Juana appears to genuinely love her drunken, wife-beating loser of a husband. When she's begging Don Fermin to help get Animas out of jail (Animas assaulted the don's son), Don Fermin sniffs that she'd be better off without him.
- Witch Doctor: The local witch doctor is shown in the opening scene muttering incantations over Animas's dying little boy; it doesn't work. Later, the witch doctor pops up again and tells Animas to give six hens to a "golden rooster" as a magic spell to get money.
- Zip Me Up: Animas taunts Catalina, waving the money he got (by stealing from his wife) and saying that he absolutely won't give any to her. She then makes a transparently obvious come-on, shucking off her blouse and asking him to scratch her back. It works.
