¡Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes! (Jalisco, don’t back down!) is a 1941 film directed by Joselito Rodríguez and starring Jorge Negrete. The film site Sensacine México calls the title “una frase nacional” (a national phrase) and “una declaración de carácter” (a declaration of character).
Rajarse is one of the Mexicanisms recognized by the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. It means “retractarse, o faltar a una promesa” (to back down, or to break a promise).
The documentary Presunto culpable (Presumed Guilty) follows the case of José Antonio Zúñiga, sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder. The lawyers Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete took up his case. They found that the lawyer appointed to defend him had no valid license. The authorities agreed to a new trial, with the same judge presiding.
The film opened in Mexican cinemas on February 18, 2011. On March 2, a federal judge suspended its screenings at the request of a witness who appeared in it. A higher court lifted the order, and in two weeks the film took more than 18 million pesos at the box office.
In the film Nosotros los Nobles (2013), a rich father pretends to be bankrupt so that his three irresponsible children learn to work. In June 2013, Animal Político reported that the film had earned about 25.4 million dollars and had been seen by almost six million people in Mexico. It was “la película con más éxito de taquilla en la historia reciente del cine mexicano” (the most successful film at the box office in the recent history of Mexican cinema).
Cantinflear is a Spanish verb made from the name of Cantinflas, the Mexican comic actor Mario Moreno. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines it as “hablar o actuar de forma disparatada e incongruente,” to speak or act in a nonsensical and incongruous way.
According to Excélsior, the Academy recognized the word in 1992. The newspaper quotes the definition with a further phrase, y sin decir nada, “and without saying anything.”
In Fernando de Fuentes’s film El compadre Mendoza (1934), Rosalío Mendoza is a landowner during the Revolution. He swaps the portraits of Huerta and Zapata as the Revolution shifts. He makes a Zapatista leader the godfather of his son, and so his compadre. Under pressure, he betrays him.
In 1994, the magazine Somos ranked the film third among the 100 best Mexican films.
Luis Estrada’s film La ley de Herodes (1999) is set in 1949. Juan Vargas, an honest clerk, is made mayor of the village of San Pedro de los Saguaros. His padrino político, his political godfather, is López, the private secretary of the governor. López advises him to use his power and gives him a gun. By the end of the film, Vargas is a federal deputy.
According to El Universal, the state film institute IMCINE tried to pull the film from the Acapulco film festival in November 1999. The film went on to win nine Ariel awards.
In Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Tōkyō Sonata (Tokyo Sonata), released in Japan on September 27, 2008, a father has lost his job in a restructuring but cannot bring himself to tell his family.
At the 61st Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section.
In Kurosawa Akira’s film Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai), released by Toho on April 26, 1954, farmers hire samurai to defend their village against bandits. At first, the frightened villagers stay in their houses and do not come out.
Then Kikuchiyo, who has joined the seven, beats the village’s wooden alarm board. Thinking the bandits have come, the villagers rush out of their houses and beg the samurai for help. Kikuchiyo also brings out armor and swords that the villagers had taken by hunting down fleeing samurai.
Kurosawa Akira’s film Akahige (Red Beard) opened in Japan on April 3, 1965. It is based on Yamamoto Shūgorō’s Akahige shinryōtan. A young doctor, Yasumoto, has studied medicine in Nagasaki. He comes to live as an apprentice at the Koishikawa Yōjōsho, the shogunate’s clinic for the poor in Edo. Its director is known as Red Beard.
The film database eiga.com describes the story as the bond between the director and the young doctor. In its synopsis, Yasumoto resists the director at first and slowly comes to respect him. The cast is led by Mifune Toshirō and Kayama Yūzō.
In the film Tsuribaka nisshi (Free and Easy), released by Shochiku in 1988, Hamasaki Densuke is a salaryman obsessed with fishing. He is transferred to the head office in Tokyo, and in a cafeteria he meets Suzuki Ichinosuke, the president of his company. Neither knows who the other is.
When they go fishing, Hama-chan, a rank-and-file employee played by Nishida Toshiyuki, is the master. Su-san, the president, played by Mikuni Rentarō, is his pupil. The magazine Serai suggests that the appeal of the series probably lies in this reversal of rank in private life. It ran to 22 films, from 1988 to 2009.