The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982)
Library of Congress description:
Acknowledged as one of the key feature films from the burgeoning 1980s Chicano film movement, “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” was based on folklorist Américo Paredes’ acclaimed account of “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,” a key work of the Chicano Studies movement. The ballad from the borderlands of Texas and Mexico, explored the creation through song of the folk hero Gregorio Cortez, a poor Tejano farmer accused in 1901 of killing a sheriff who had shot Cortez’s brother during a poorly translated interrogation. A posse of some 600 Texas Rangers pursued Cortez for 11 days before his capture, as widespread newspaper accounts of the chase and subsequent trial spurred the creation of the ballad. Relying on the prodigious talents of director Robert M. Young, lead actor and co-producer Edward James Olmos, cinematographer Ray Villalobos and producer Moctesuma Esparza, “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” employed narrative devices common to such classic films as “Citizen Kane,” “Rashomon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to tell its complicated story in a nonlinear fashion. While some characters speak in Spanish and others in English, the filmmakers decided not to use subtitles to replicate in audiences the experience of borderland characters caught up in the unfolding tragedy.
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