#726) Verbena Tragica (1939)

#726) Verbena Tragica (1939)

OR “Nobody Up There Likes Me”

Directed by Charles Lamont
Written by Jean Bart and Miguel de Zárraga

Class of 1996

The Plot: On the eve of a Columbus Day festival in New York’s Spanish Harlem, the Vargas family celebrate the sudden return of Mateo (Fernando Soler), paroled after eight months in prison. Mateo’s Mamita (Pilar Arcos) and sister Lola (Cecilia Callejo) are happy he’s home, but Mateo’s wife Blanca (Luana Alcañiz) faints upon seeing him return. While Blanca is in bed recuperating, her doctor (Danton Ferrero) lets it slip that Blanca is recently pregnant, and it doesn’t take Mateo long to figure out that he’s not the father. Mateo becomes despondent, turning down a promising return to his boxing career to find out who this other man is, and why his wife is spending so much time with Lola’s fiancé Claudio (Juan Torena). “Verbena Tragica” is a film whose subject matter was downright scandalous in 1939 and is the rare Spanish language film produced by a Hollywood studio.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a history of Hollywood studios producing foreign language versions of their films and cites “Verbena” as “unusual” because there was never an English version made. An essay by Mexican film history expert Carl J. Mora also covers Hollywood’s foreign language productions, while still parsing out the little information we have about “Verbena Tragica”.

But Does It Really?: “Verbena Tragica” is on here to represent the long-lost practice of Hollywood studios filming multiple versions of the same movie in different languages. Sadly, most of these films are lost or only survive in part, so finding one like “Verbena Tragica” in its entirety is worth celebrating. As a film it’s okay: not really noteworthy outside of its taboo storyline, but quick and harmless enough that you don’t mind its inherent B movie rough edges. The film’s NFR inclusion is more on the curio side of things, but it is certainly unique among other NFR films of the era, and therefore more than deserving of its spot on the list.

Everybody Gets One: Charles Lamont started off as a stage actor, then as a silent film actor before moving behind the camera as a director. Lamont spent most of the ‘20s and ‘30s directing shorts, including some of Buster Keaton’s sound comedies. While scouting a dance school for potential child actors for the “Baby Burlesk” series, Lamont discovered a four-year-old named Shirley Temple and gave her her first film role. Lamont started directing features in 1934, and by 1937 he had moved to Columbia Pictures, where among his film assignments was “Verbena Tragica”.

Title Track: “Verbena Tragica” roughly translates to “Tragic Festival”; verbena being a type of fair/dance party common in Spanish-speaking cultures. Apparently, the film also went by the English title “Block Party”, which implies a much more lighthearted movie than this actually is.

Wow, That’s Dated: Primarily the celebration of Columbus Day, which has mostly been replaced by Indigenous Peoples’ Day here in the U.S. There are still, however, plenty of Columbus Day celebrations, including one in San Francisco’s North Beach district, which means I had to listen to those goddamn Blue Angels roar past my apartment again. This is my tax dollars at work? But I digress…

Other notes

For those of you unfamiliar with a Multiple-Language Version (MLV) of a film: In the early days of sound film, studios would often shoot multiple versions of the same film in different languages, often using the same sets, costumes, and in some cases actors (this recycling was much easier to do in the studio system days when everything was in-house). The most famous example of all these is Universal’s Spanish-language version of “Drácula”, which would eventually be added to the Registry in 2015. Spanish language versions were the most common MLV thanks to the abundance of Spanish speakers both in and outside America (European languages fared okay until the rise of Nazism throughout the ‘30s). As previously mentioned, “Verbena Tragica” is unique in that no English language version was ever made, most likely owing to the film’s themes of adultery (which was permitted under the Hays Code as long as it wasn’t “treated attractively”). MLVs were already outdated by 1939; dubbing technology had come a long way, and studies showed that international audiences didn’t mind reading subtitles if it meant seeing Hollywood stars (and not their foreign language counterparts) on the screen. A film like “Verbena Tragica” was one of the last of a dying breed of movie.
I had been warned prior to my viewing that the versions of “Verbena Tragica” available online do not have an English dub or subtitles. What I ended up doing was watching the film on the Library of Congress’ YouTube channel, with the Spanish subtitles auto translated into English. It wasn’t pretty, but it was better than nothing. For the most part, the subtitles gave me a general idea of what was happening, and since most of the film is expository dialogue and not visual storytelling this was quite helpful. There were of course a few parts where a character’s regional phrases or fast talking threw the subtitles for a loop, and it’s times like this that I really regret taking French in high school. Do yourself a favor and learn a little Spanish; not just for watching this movie, but for life in general. It really comes in handy. [UPDATE: the version embedded at the top of this post now features English subtitles! Thanks to Eric from filmregistry.net for sharing.]
There is not a lot of information out there about this cast. Probably the best known of this group is the lead, Fernando Soler, who was a mainstay of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. The rest of the cast seem to have been primarily international actors, with “Verbena” being a brief pit-stop in Hollywood; only Cecilia Callejo (Lola) had a lengthy career in America. Fun Fact: Prior to being an actor, Juan Torena (Claudio) was a footballer in Barcelona! It’s one of the better athlete-turned-actor performances on the Registry, and I don’t recall him using his hands that much.
As usual with my Registry viewings, I went into “Verbena Tragica” cold, and given its ‘30s production period, I definitely wasn’t expecting adultery to be part of this. It’s all handled delicately; you never see the affair, and characters generally talk around it, but the mere acknowledgement of it from a ‘30s film is quite daring. Between this and the Spanish, watching “Verbena Tragica” was like watching a telenovela (cine-novela?).
One more cast member shoutout: Manuel (Mateo’s manager) is played by Carlos Villarías, who played Dracula in the aforementioned Spanish language “Drácula”. I guess Hollywood only had so many Spanish speaking actors.
I cannot fathom an English language version of this movie given the Production Code of the time. How do you tone down adultery without completely compromising this story? And who were they going to cast in the English language version? Since Columbia’s track-record was mostly low-budget B pictures in 1939, the odds are very good that this would have been handed off to actors no one has heard of before or since.
Is it just me or does Mateo kinda looks like Broderick Crawford? Hey, Crawford was floating around the studios back then, maybe he could have played “Matt” in the English version!
Let’s take a breather from all this family drama and have us a song! Mamacita breaks out her guitar and sings “Gitanerias”, written by Mamacita’s actor Pilar Arcos. It has nothing to do with nothing, but this is back when movies were still general entertainment and no one was paying attention to the B picture, so why not have a few songs in there? Plus, if it weren’t for the musical numbers, I think this movie would technically be considered a short subject.
After a few more dramatic scenes of Mateo, Blanca, and Claudio we get club singer Luis performing not one, but two more songs! Musician Sergio de Karlo plays Luis, and he is definitely not playing that guitar.
[Spoilers] Well this movie took a turn, but I guess this was to be expected (the word “Tragica” is in the title after all). Mateo and Claudio’s fight on the fire escape starts promisingly, but then Claudio goes down with one punch, so that’s disappointing. The climax features my favorite performance in the entire movie: the neighborhood police officer who comes to arrest Mateo; as played by the only White guy in the cast, clearly speaking his lines phonetically (“Lo see-en-tay Mah-tay-o, pair-o tee-en-ess ko ven-eer kon-mee-go.”)

Legacy

As best I can tell, “Verbena Tragica” premiered in Panama in December 1938 before playing New York and Los Angeles in March 1939. According to the UCLA film archive, the film was “very successful in the cinemas of Los Angeles’ Mexican neighborhoods”. The film was less successful in Mexico, which was making its own great movies without the aid of Hollywood, thank you very much.
Charles Lamont’s tenure at Columbia Pictures was short-lived, primarily due to his dislike of Harry Cohn (join the club, Charles). Lamont spent the rest of his directing career at Universal, making movies with such Universal mainstays as Abbott & Costello, Ma & Pa Kettle, and Francis the Talking Mule.
Since its NFR induction nearly 30 years ago, “Verbena Tragica” has maintained its unique spot in film history, with many a film school and museum holding screenings of the film (presumably with better English subtitles). The film is celebrated for its diverse cast of Spanish and Mexican artists, and for its representation of an oft-forgotten practice in Classic Hollywood filmmaking.