If it is fair to say that Julio Bracho was one of the most prolific and important directors during Mexican cinema’s Golden Age (he made an average of two features per year, between 1949 and 1959), it is also worth nothing that La sombra del caudillo is relatively unusual in the context of the director’s oeuvre. Based on the novel by Mexican author Martín Luis Guzman and based on the real-life assassination of general Francisco Serrano, who was in the running to be the next President of Mexico, the film was a project that Bracho had been working on for many years; a political thriller that dealt, in depth, with the complex political maneuvering at work within the Mexican PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party)*. Again influenced by expressionism, with extraordinary photography from Agustín Jimenez, La sombra del caudillo was a direct challenge to the corrupt authoritarian structures that Bracho saw at work in Mexican politics, now four decades after the Revolution had ended.
Though it was originally approved for screening by the Mexican film authorities, and had screened at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the film was later pulled from the international circuit by Mexican army forces, who prohibited the ‘accursed work’ from being seen for thirty years. It remains one of the most notorious cases of censorship in the history of Mexican cinema, and its effects are still felt today: since the film was only screened surreptitiously between 1960 and 1990, the original negatives have never been found. The only digital copies available were made from significantly damaged negatives in 16mm and 35mm, and exist thanks to the combined work of the Cineteca Nacional, Filmoteca de la UNAM, and the Mexican Union of Film Production Workers.

*The PRI was founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party, supposedly to institutionalize the political agreements made after the Revolution. Between 1929 and 1994 the PRI won every presidential election – holding power for a total of 71 consecutive years – but was widely accused of corruption.

Daniela Michel e Chlöe Roddick