La virgen de Guadalupe (1976) User Reviews

The Disappointment of Guadalupe

[Miss_L_Nicole · 3/10 · 19 December 2006]

I really wanted to like this movie - la virgen de Guadalupe is the patron of our church and very sacred to me personally. With that said, this movie was terrible to the point of silliness. I usually try to keep an open mind with foreign movies; often the standards for dialogue or even effects can be dramatically different. Because this movie came from Mexico, I was expecting the dramatic dialogue to be more heavy-handed than the dialogue from a movie from the United States would, as is culturally appropriate. This movie went well beyond even what is acceptable for Mexico's dramatic standards, however. The movie was over-acted, and the characters were shallow and under-developed. The natives looked more like Europeans than natives (Juan Diego is very light-skinned and his eyes appear to be hazel in color, for example). The subplot between the Spanish daughter of the viceroy and the native leader Temoc distracts from the real story: the birth of Mexican Catholicism. It is also historically inaccurate in that the Spaniards almost never brought their families to their colonies. The worst part, however, was the cheesiness of the appearance of Mary. This was truly pythonesque: Mary appeared as a painted icon with a real woman's face in the middle. I would not recommend this movie if you are looking for a historically accurate or emotional story of the Virgen of Guadalupe. It should also be noted that there is not a subtitle track on this DVD, so you must be able to appreciate it in its original Spanish.

The Odd and the Beautiful

[JohnHowardReid · 8/10 · 12 September 2009]

Like the previous reviewer, I did not expect a great deal from this Laguna DVD. The cover itself is off-putting and I thought I was in for one of the worst examples of misplaced religiosity. Oddly, it's only the scenes with the Virgin Herself that are amateurishly presented. The rest of the movie is great, especially if, like me, you enjoy a film that's given the full Hollywood (or in this case, Calderon) treatment. True, most of the surrounding story is fiction, but I didn't let that worry me when the super-lovely blonde heroine, Angelica Chain, was on the screen. And when he is not confronting the Virgin, Fernando Allende does more than adequately by Juan Diego. In fact, his final scene, although eagerly anticipated, is extremely well handled by all concerned. It brought tears to my eyes. Director Alfredo Salazar also makes a really impressive use of his eerie Mayan sets and locations, and the color photography often comes across in a quite striking fashion.