Between 1950 and 1975, Puerto Rico’s Division of Community Education produced approximately 65 short subject films designed to inform and influence citizens about government policy. The productions featured mostly amateur native performers and artists while capturing both the beauty of the Puerto Rican countryside and rural struggles against poverty.
Added to the National Film Registry in 1998, “Modesta” (1956) is one of those films and tells the story of a barrio woman who stands up to her abusive husband. It is an empowerment story for women but is also intended to bring attention to the men in the community about their actions.
You can watch “Modesta” in the Library of Congress National Screening Room. The film is offered in its original Spanish language version from 1956 and is one of over 1,200 films available for viewing in the National Screening Room.
In today’s guest essay, Daniel Eagan shares more about the filmmakers, early Puerto Rican film history, and the making of the movie.
“Modesta”
By Daniel Eagan
Film historian Gary D. Keller dates the beginnings of the Puerto Rican film industry to 1916, when the Sociedad Industrial Cine Puerto Rico was formed. Its three documented features are believed lost. Subsequent production companies included the Tropical Film Company and Porto Rico Photoplays. In the 1920s, Juan Emilio Viguié Cajas worked as a freelance newsreel cameraman for commercial companies as well as the government. He is credited with the first Puerto Rican sound feature, “Romance Tropical” (1934), also believed lost.
After World War II, the Committee on Parks and Public Entertainment financed some half-dozen documentary shorts. In 1949, Luiz Muñoz Marin became the first popularly elected governor of Puerto Rico, a position he held for sixteen years. One of his early actions in office was the establishment of the División de Educación de la Communidad (Division of Community Education), responsible for producing radio shows, lectures, books, and pamphlets in support of reform. Under the jurisdiction of the Departamento de Instrucción Pública, the division of Community Education also produced some sixty-five short films and two features between 1950 and 1975. Those films featured Puerto Rican performers and artists, as well as filmmakers from mainland United States, including director Willard Van Dyke, screenwriter Edwin Roskam, and Benjamin Doniger, a cinematographer who worked with Robert Flaherty on “Louisiana Story” (1949).
Films made under the Division of Community Education were largely aimed at a jíbarro or rural audience. These were the people that Muñoz Marin had to win over in order to put his policies in place. Films like “El Puente” (1954), directed by Amilcar Tirado, stressed the importance of community solidarity and cooperation. It showed how a village overcame isolation by building a bridge. “Los Peloteros” (1951), directed by Jack Delano, was the Division’s first feature and is generally cited as its best film. In it, children trying to buy baseball uniforms taught the adults around them the value of working together.
Many Division films were based on actual characters and events. Most were shot on location, using non-actors in many of the roles. But Division filmmakers also adapted literary works. “Ignacio” (1956), directed by Angel F. Rivera, was adapted from “Los Casos de Ignacio y Santiago” by the short story author and playwright René Marqués. That same year Marqués helped director Doniger and his cameraman Luis A. Maisonet adapt a short story by Domingo Silas Ortiz about a woman in a poor barrio who stands up to her abusive husband. Again, the overarching theme was cooperation, but with its intimations of “Lysistrata”, “Modesta” made feminist issues its central concern.
Befitting its title, “Modesta” is a small, careful film marked by moderation. As Flaherty did in the “Louisiana Story,” Doniger spends considerable time on the countryside of Puerto Rico itself, documenting both its beauty and harshness. Its characters are revealed as much by their action as their dialogue, which is terse, even blunt. Doniger is matter of fact about the grinding poverty in rural communities; just detailing the demanding chores and tasks women faced is commentary enough.
Doniger and his crew display an easy familiarity with film technique, incorporating an unobtrusive and amusing flashback in the opening scenes, cross-cutting between a cockfight and Modesta’s day-to-day routine to make political and social points, using a song by the popular artist Ramito to illustrate their themes. Doniger elicits commendable performances from his mostly amateur cast, while Maisonet, makes excellent use of dawn and dusk lightning. “Modesta” is not nearly as aggressive as “Salt of the Earth” (1954), with which it shares several scenes and ideas, but in its way, it is just as effective. Its closing shots, with the villagers heading home guided by candlelight, and a cantina owner closing up shop for the night, are especially satisfying.
“Modesta” was popular worldwide, winning an award at the 1956 Venice Film Festival. Doniger worked on several other Division films, as did Maisonet, who directed “Gena la de Blas” in 1964. Marqués wrote “Juan sin Seso” (1959), a satire of advertising, as well as an influential documentary, “¿Qué Opina la Mujer?” (1957), which interviews First Lady Inés Mendoza de Muñoz Marín and other figures about the treatment of women in Puerto Rican society.
The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Library of Congress.
Daniel Eagan has worked for Warner Bros., MGM, and other studios as a researcher and story analyst. His work has appeared in “Smithsonian,” “The Nation,” “The Hollywood Reporter,” and other outlets. He is also the author of the “America’s Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2009) from which this essay is reprinted with permission.
For more information about the National Film Registry and the National Screening Room visit www.loc.gov/film.