Ripstein, Arturo
RIPSTEIN, Arturo
Nationality: Mexican. Born: Mexico City, 1943. Family: Son of Alfredo Ripstein, one of Mexico's most accomplished producers, credited with more than 180 films. Career: Began directorial career at the age of twenty-one, with the debut of A Time to Die (screenplay by Gabriel García Márquez, adapted from his own short story). Awards: Golden Ariel, Academy Awards, Mexico, for Castillo de la pureza, 1973; Golden Ariel, Academy Awards, Mexico, for El Lugar sin límites, 1978; Golden Ariel, Academy Awards, Mexico, for Cadena perpetua, 1979; Golden Ariel, Academy Awards, Mexico, for El Imperio de la fortuna, 1987; Grand prize, San Sebastian Film Festival, 1993, for The Beginning and the End; Golden Ariel, Academy Awards, Mexico, for Principio y fin, 1994; Latin America Cinema Award, Sundance Film Festival, for El Cornel no tiene quien le escriba, 2000.
Films as Director:
- 1965
Tiempo de Morir (A Time to Die)
- 1966
H.O.
- 1968
Los Recuerdos del Porvenir
- 1969
La Hora de los Niños
- 1970
El Naufrago de la Calle de la Providencia (co-d with Rafael Castanedo)
- 1971
Autobiografia (+ sc, pr)
- 1972
El Castillo de la Pureza (The Castle of Purity) (+ sc)
- 1974
El Santo Oficio (The Holy Office) (+ sc)
- 1975
Foxtrot (+ sc)
- 1976
Lecumberri (+ sc)
- 1977
El Lugar sin límites (The Place without Limits; Hell withoutLimits); La Viuda negra (The Black Widow)
- 1978
Cadena Perpetua (Vicious Circle) (+ sc)
- 1979
La Ilegal; Tía Alejandra
- 1980
La Tia Alexandra
- 1981
Rastro de muerte
- 1983
La Seducción; Rastro de la Muerte
- 1984
El Otro (The Other)
- 1985
El Imperio de la Fortuna (In the Realm of Fortune)
- 1989
Mentiras Piadosos (White Lies)
- 1992
La Mujer del Puerto (Woman of the Port)
- 1993
Principio y fin (The Beginning and the End)
- 1994
La Reina de la Noche (The Queen of the Night)
- 1996
La Sonrisa del Diablo (series for TV); Profundo carmesí (Deep Crimson)
- 1998
El Evangelio de las Maravillas (Divine)
- 1999
El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to theColonel)
- 2000
La Perdición de los Hombres; Así es la vida (Such is Life)
Publications
By RIPSTEIN: articles—
Interview with N. Ghali, in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), April 1975.
"El cine de Ripstein," an interview with Alejandro Ricagno and Eduardo Antin, in El Amante Cine, December 1996.
Interview with G. Del Toro, in Village Voice (New York), 21 October 1997.
On RIPSTEIN: book—
Ramirez Berg, Charles, Cinema of Solitude: A Critical Study ofMexican Film, 1967–1983, Austin, 1992.
On RIPSTEIN: articles—
Cornand, A., "Le Chateau de la purete," in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), 1974.
Pick, Z. M., "Decouverted'un autre Cinema Mexicain," in Positif (Paris), no. 157, 1974.
Lajeunesse, J., "Le saint Office," in Revue de Cinéma (Paris), October 1974.
Hobermen, J., "Film: Hostage to Fortune," in Village Voice (New York), 24 March 1987.
Greenbaum, R., "New Directors, New Films—1987 (Part 2)," in Films in Reviews (New York), December 1987.
Vega Alfaro, E. de la, "Fichero de Cineastas Nacionales," in Dicine (Mexico City), November/December 1987.
Berg, C. R., "Cracks in the Macho Monolith: Machismo, Man, and Mexico in Recent Mexican Cinema," in New Orleans Review, no. 16, 1989.
Brandlmeier, T., "Muenchen: Ripstein und Andere," in EPD Film (Postfach, Germany), August 1989.
Orejel, A., "Mentiras Piadosas," in Dicine (Mexico City), January 1990.
Carro, N. "Cineastas y Testimonios del Cine Mexicano," in Dicine (Mexico City), September 1990.
Uhlig, M. A., "Mexico's Film Industry Looks for a Breakthrough," in New York Times, 22 January 1991.
Loffreda, P., "La Mujer del Puerto," in Cineforum (Bergamo, Italy), June 1991.
Rauger, Jean-Françis, "Arturo Ripstein: les origines de la fatalité," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), April 1994.
Paranagua, Paulo Antonio, and Hubert Niogret, in Positif (Paris), April 1994.
Berthomieu, Pierre, Paulo Antonio Paranagua, and Hubert Niogret, in Positif (Paris), April 1995.
Cox, Alex, and Richard Pena, "Roads to the South," in FilmComment (New York), November-December 1995.
Jeancolas, Jean-Pierre, and Michel Ciment, in Positif (Paris), March 1997.
* * *
With more than twenty directorial works that span almost thirty years, Arturo Ripstein is one of the best-known Mexican directors whose fame reaches beyond the international film festival circuit. Son of one of Mexico's most accomplished film producers, Ripstein literally grew up on the backlots of studios. He was not only able to observe the techniques of some master filmmakers, such as Luis Buñuel and Emilio Fernández, but was also taken on as an assistant director by the former. With such a filmmaking background since adolescence, Ripstein made his directorial debut, A Time to Die, at the age of twenty-one.
A Time to Die features a Gabriel García Márquez screenplay adapted from his own short story. Following this came a series of collaborations with other Latin American talents, such as Carlos Fuentes, Manuel Puig, José Donoso, Juan Rulfo, Elena Garros, Julio Alejandro, José Emilio Pacheco, Vincete Leñero, and Silvina Ocampo. As such closeness with literary works may suggest, Ripstein's films are often precise in their realism yet tacit as well as articulate in their aesthetic visions.
His 1985 In the Realm of Fortune depicts the rise and fall of an ambitious peasant in the world of gambling. As the hero, Dionsio, gradually ascends from slavish poverty into affluence, Ripstein captures "superbly the sleazy, smoke-drenched atmosphere of the world of cheap carnivals, opportunistic women, cock fights and nights-long card games," according to Richard Greenbaum. It is in this world that Ripstein sets out to paint a ghastly portrait of obsession, the downfall of a human being, and fate like a pendulum oscillating between the lucky and the luckless. By the end of the movie, Dionsio commits suicide after losing everything—his wife and his fortune—except for the ornate silver coffin he wishes to be buried in. As his young daughter, Bernardina, sings in a carnival (just like her mother did to find a husband) at the very end of the movie, one cannot help but wonder: if poverty is the eternal reality of the luckless and luck does not last, how does one transcend a world driven by materialism? The content is grim and the tonality dark. Deliverance, however, is not out of the question, for, through an understanding of material obsession as such, one needs not emphasize or identify with Dionsio to feel. In 1992, Ripstein started a project collaborating with yet another Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz, on his novel The Beginning and the End. A story originally written in the 1940s about the social collapse of a Cairo family due to the death of the father, it takes on a universal quality under the pen of Ripstein's longtime working companion, Paz Alicia Garcíadiego (who also wrote the screenplays for In the Realm of Fortune, White Lies, and Woman of the Port). The parallels drawn between Cairo and Mexico City are uncanny. As Ripstein himself puts it, "Mexico City, an enormous urban center, noisy, dusty, like Cairo, is destroyed and reconstructed daily. . . . They are cities conquered by accelerated urban development, irrational modernization." In the filmmaker's vision, "the family is the guardian of retired values [and] is responsible that destiny is carried out." While the camera work almost renders a mythic texture, the soundtrack provides "a tragic breath," "an operatic tone." Recognized for its compelling treatment of a family story and rigorous artistic probing, The Beginning and the End was awarded the Grand Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1993.
Ripstein and Garcíadiego's 1994 collaboration, The Queen of the Night, is an "imaginary biography of the sentimental life of Lucha Reyes." Set between 1939 and 1944, the famed folk singer's life is chronicled in all its intensity as a "descent into the hell of alcohol, sexual excess and jealousy," writes Jorge Rufinelli. Another puissant theme of neurotic obsession and self-destruction recalls not only Dionsio's lost battle with luck but also The Beginning and the End's eerie picture of a domineering mother. Family as well as interpersonal relationships are articulated not in terms of inevitable sufferings per se, but rather, through the alluring singing of Reyes, in terms of an intensity closer to the overpowering force of life. Therefore, with Ripstein's incisive and sure hand, "melodramatic themes are filtered through a rigorous aesthetic vision, so that [in The Queen of the Night] sentimentalism ends up becoming its opposite."
In his fourth decade of an outstanding filmmaking career, there is no reason not to anticipate more masterpieces from Arturo Ripstein. This must have been a painstaking lifelong process for the filmmaker. However, as Ripstein reminds us, "all art is painful. Pained by humanity."
—Guo-Juin Hong
Ripstein, Arturo 1943–
RIPSTEIN, Arturo 1943–
PERSONAL
Full name, Arturo Ripstein Rosen; born December 13, 1943, in Mexico City, Mexico; son of Alfredo, Jr. (a producer) and Frieda (maiden name, Rosen) Ripstein; married Paz Alicia Garciadiego (a writer and composer). Education: Studied film at National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Career: Director, producer, writer, and actor. Began career as an assistant director for filmmaker Luis Bunuel in 1962.
Awards, Honors: Golden Ariel Award, Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, 1973, for El castillo de la pureza; nomination for Golden Palm, Cannes Film Festival, 1974, for El santo oficio; Golden Ariel Award and Special Prize of the Jury, San Sebastian International Film Festival, both 1978, for El lugar sin limites; Golden Ariel Award, 1979, for Cadena perpetua; nomination for Golden Prize, Moscow International Film Festival, 1981, for La seduccion; Golden Ariel Award nomination, and Silver Ariel Award nomination, best direction, both 1984, for La viuda negra; Golden Ariel Award and Silver Ariel Award, best direction, both 1987, for El imperio de la fortuna; nomination for Golden St. George, Moscow International Film Festival, 1989, for Mentiras piadosas; Golden Seashell, San Sebastian International Film Festival, 1993, Golden Ariel Award, 1994, FIPRESCI Award and DICINE Award, both Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival, 1994, Grand Coral First Prize and FIPRESCI Award, both Havana Film Festival, 1994, and Special Achievement Award, San Diego International Film Festival, 1997, all for Principio y fin; nomination for Golden Palm, Cannes Film Festival, and nomination for Golden Kikito, best Latin film, Gramado Film Festival, both 1994, for La reina de la noche; FIPRESCI Award and DICINE Award, both Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival, 1995, for La mujer del puerto; Golden Lion Award nomination, Venice Film Festival, 1996, Grand Coral First Prize and award for best director, both Havana Film Festival, 1995, and honorable mention for Latin American Cinema Award, Sundance Film Festival, 1997, all for Profundo carmesi; Mayahuel Award, best film, Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival, and Silver Ariel Award nomination, best direction, both 1999, for El evangelio de las maravillas; nomination for Golden Palm, Cannes Film Festival, 1999, and Latin American Cinema Award, Sundance Film Festival, 2000, both for El coronel no tiene quien le escriba; Akira Kurosawa Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, 1999; Special Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Award (with Arcelia Ramirez), both Havana Film Festival, 2000, for Asi es la vida; Golden Seashell and FIPRESCI Award, San Sebastian International Film Festival, 2000, and two Golden Kikitos, best film and best director, both Latin film competition, 2002, all for La perdicion de los hombres; special mention for San Marco Prize, Venice Film Festival, 2002, for La virgen de la lujuria; retrospectives of Ripstein's work have appeared at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
CREDITS
Film Director:
Tiempo de morir (also known as A Time to Die ), Alameda Films, 1965.
"HO," Juego peligroso (also known as Jogo perigoso ), Alameda Films, 1966.
Los recuerdos del porvenir (also known as Memories of the Future ), Alameda Films, 1968.
(And producer) La hora de los ninos (also known as The Children's Hour ), Cine Independiente de Mexico, 1969.
(And producer) Crimen, 1970.
(And producer) Exorcismo, 1970.
(And producer) La belleza, 1970.
(With Rafael Castanedo) El naufrago de la Calle Providencia (documentary; also known as The Castaway of Providence Street and The Castaway on the Street of Providence ), 1970.
(And producer) Autobiografia, 1971.
El castillo de la pureza (also known as Castle of Purity ), Estudios Churub busco Azteca, 1973.
Los otros ninos, 1974.
El santo oficio (also known as The Holy Office ), 1975.
Foxtrot (also known as The Far Side of Paradise and The Other Side of Paradise ), New World, 1975.
Lecumberri: El palacio negro (documentary; also known as Lecumberri: The Black Palace ), 1976.
El borracho, 1976.
La causa (documentary; also known as The Cause ), 1976.
La viuda negra (also known as The Black Widow ), 1977.
El lugar sin limites (also known as Hell without Limits and The Place without Limits ), 1978.
Cadena perpetua (also known as In for Life and Vicious Circle ), 1978.
La Tia Alejandra, 1979.
La ilegal, 1979.
La seduccion (also known as Seduction ), 1980.
Rastro de muerte, 1981.
El otro (also known as The Other ), Conacine, 1984.
Quitele el usted y tratamos, 1984.
De todo como en botica, 1984.
Contra hechos no hay palabras, 1986.
El imperio de la fortuna (also known as The Realm of Fortune ), Azteca, 1986.
Mentiras piadosas (also known as Love Lies and White Lies ), 1987.
La mujer del puerto (also known as Woman of the Port ), Alta Films, 1992.
(And producer) Principio y fin (also known as The Beginning and the End ), Prime Films, 1993.
La reina de la noche (also known as The Queen of the Night and La reine de la nuit ), JMM Invest, S.L., 1994.
Profundo carmesi (also known as Deep Crimson and Carmin profond ), New Yorker Films, 1996.
El evangelio de las maravillas (also known as Divine ), Wanda Distribucion Cinematografica de Films, 1998.
El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (also known as No One Writes to the Colonel, Pas de lettre pour le colonel, and Personne n'ecrit au colonel ), Alta Films, 1999.
Asi es la vida (also known as Such Is Life and C'est la vie ), Wanda Vision, 2000.
La perdicion de los hombres (also known as The Plagues of Man and The Ruination of Men ), Wanda Vision, 2000.
La virgen de la lujuria (also known as The Virgin of Lust ), Laurenfilm, 2002.
Film Work; Other:
Producer, The Crime of Father Amaro, Samuel Goldwyn Company, 2002.
Film Appearances:
Dile que la quiero, 1963.
Raul, Los novios de mis hijas, 1964.
El dia comenzo ayer (also known as Opus 65 ), 1965.
El camino de los espantos, 1965.
Le muerte es puntual, 1967.
Autobiografia, 1971.
Adriana del Rio, actriz, 1979.
Rastro de muerte, 1981.
El amante africano, 1985.
Himself, Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (documentary), Channel Four Films, 1999.
Himself, A proposito de Bunuel (documentary; also known as Speaking of Bunuel and A propos de Bunuel ), Wanda Vision, 2000.
Television Director; Movies:
Hombre con guitarra (also known as Man with Guitar ), 1977.
Television Director; Episodic:
Director for the series Dulce desafio, La sonrisa del diablo, and Triangulo.
WRITINGS
Screenplays:
La hora de los ninos (also known as The Children's Hour ), Cine Independiente de Mexico, 1969.
Crimen, 1970.
Exorcismo, 1970.
La belleza, 1970.
Autobiografia, 1971.
(Adaptor) Cinco mil dolares de recompensa, 1972.
(With Jose Emilio Pacheco) El castillo de la pureza (also known as Castle of Purity ), Estudios Churub busco Azteca, 1973.
El santo oficio (also known as The Holy Office ), 1974.
Foxtrot (also known as The Far Side of Paradise and The Other Side of Paradise ), New World, 1975.
Lecumberri: El palacio negro (documentary; also known as Lecumberri: The Black Palace ), 1976.
(With Vicente Lenero) Cadena perpetua (also known as In for Life and Vicious Circle ), 1978.
(With Manual Puig) El lugar sin limites (based on a novel by Jose Donoso; also known as Hell without Limits and The Place without Limits ), 1978.
La seduccion (also known as Seduction ), 1980.
ADAPTATIONS
The film Rastro de muerte, released in 1981, was based on a story by Ripstein.
OTHER SOURCES
Books:
International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, St. James Press, 1996.
Periodicals:
Film Quarterly, summer, 1999, p. 2.