Alejandro Galindo, along with Julio Bracho, was one of the most prolific directors of the Golden Age, with a filmography that encompassed nearly eighty features and that deftly traversed genres from comedy, to film noir, horror and drama.
In the context of rapid industrialization under the presidency of Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946-1952), the growing influence of the United States on Mexico after the Second World War and a concurrent pull away from the more traditional, Porfirian* values of the turn of the century, Una familia de tantas relates the story of a middle-class family ruled by a domineering and conservative Patriarch. The family nucleus is threatened by a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman, who – both literally and symbolically speaking – opens the door to progress.
The film features an outstanding performance from Fernando Soler, who was part of one of the most important acting families in Mexican cinema history, and was also a favourite of Luis Buñuel, starring in The Great Madcap in 1949, as well as Susana and Daughter of Deceit, both in 1951. If Galindo was famed for his on-the-nose portraits of the Mexican urban working- and middle-classes, Soler was the actor of choice to portray the authoritarian moral defender of values, also in films like Al son de la marimba (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1940), Qué hombre tan simpático! (directed by the actor himself in 1943), La oveja negra (Ismael Rodríguez, 1949) and No desearás la mujer de tu hijo (Ismael Rodríguez, 1949).
The new, post-war modernity that is represented in Galindo’s film was a sharp break in tradition for many Mexicans: if the Porfirian era had been defined by a strong Eurocentricism, the new, American modernity was much more vulgar, and paved the way for an economic and sexual freedom that was unprecedented in Mexico.

*Relating to Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican President who served seven terms between 1876 and 1911, and against whose dictatorial rule the Revolution was aimed.

Daniela Michel e Chlöe Roddick