The following notes on Sword of Granada (El corazón y la espada) were written by Shannon Weidner, PhD student in the Department of Communication Arts at UW–Madison. Sword of Granada will screen restored to its original 3-D format on Friday, March 7 at 7 p.m. in the Cinematheque’s regular venue, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. Admission is Free and the screening is presented with the support of Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (UWLACIS).
By Shannon Weidner
Carlos Véjar Jr. and Edward Dein’s, The Sword of Granada (El corazón y la espada) is a bit of a cinematic mystery. The historical swashbuckler set in southeastern Spain during the Middle Ages has received scant coverage in available trade publications, newspapers, and academic journals, both in the United States and Mexico. Even its claim to be the “first 3-D film shot in Mexico” is, perhaps, contentious: according to The Journal of Film Preservation, Rosa Elena Cabiedes’ 54-minute film El Reportero TD (1953), predates The Sword of Granada by roughly a year. Though defining any film as “the first” is often difficult, this early 50s action-adventure set piece, featuring performances from stars César Romero and Katy Jurado, provides a compelling early example of the Golden Age of 3-D in Mexico and the United States.
Since 1922, the capabilities of 3-D film technology have captivated filmmakers and audiences. The first reported 3-D feature in the United States was the silent short, The Power of Love, directed by Harry K. Fairall and Nat G. Deverich. Shot in anaglyph (red/green) 3-D, the film is considered lost. Despite its unknown whereabouts, The Power of Love innovated the early film viewing experience by using 3D to allow viewers to “choose their own narrative adventure” in that viewers could opt to look through either the green or red side of the 3D lenses for a happy ending (green) or a more somber finale (red).
Approximately thirty years later, the widespread popularity of television in the 1950s began to worry filmmakers, exhibitors, and industry executives. Their efforts to entice consumers to leave their homes and head back to theaters relied on an abundance of new technologies, including widescreen presentation formats (ex: CinemaScope), vivid color film processes (Technicolor), and 3-D filmmaking. As audiences continued to see such pictures as Vincent Price’s House of Wax (1953), the “first 3-D horror film,” as well as Bwana Devil (1952), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1953), and Dial M for Murder (1953), American, Italian, English, Hong Kong-based, and Mexican film studios collectively produced at least fifty-seven 3-D shorts and feature films from 1952-1954. Despite the brief successes of 3-D films, productions began to taper soon after the “Golden Age of 3-D”, likely due to costly production and exhibition expenses. Standard polarized 3-D projection required two of everything, including two prints of the film and two technicians to run the film simultaneously.
Against this backdrop, The Sword of Granada began production in early June 1953 at Estudios Tepeyac in Mexico City, according to The Dictionary of Mexican Film Directors. Estudios Tepeyac was one of four units comprising Studios America, a foundational studio of classic Mexican media production. Known primarily for its television output but located in the lavish neighborhood of Lindavista, a quasi-Beverly Hills by way of Mexico City, the studio attracted a range of film and television productions including Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (1950). As the newest film studio in Mexico City at the time, Estudios Tepeyac and The Sword of Granada production team acquired a 3-D camera rig from the Howard Anderson Optical Company in Burbank, CA, according to Robert Furmanek of the 3-D Film archive. One of the top camera houses of the era, the Howard Anderson team would go on to innovate in the field of visual effects as the core visual effects team for Star Trek: The Original Series.
As with much of the production details of The Sword of Granada, little information is known at present about the origins of the source material, though the AFI Catalog notes that “A modern Mexican source attributes the screenplay to Rafael García Travesí.” Travesí, a Mexican screenwriter, would later be known for writing the “Santo” wrestling-superhero and exploitation-adjacent films including such titles as Santo vs. The Vampire Women (1962), Santo v. the Martian Invasion (1967) and Santo v. Black Magic Woman (1973).
Travesí’s early genre work with The Sword of Granada was designed with both Mexican and American audiences in mind. For example, according to Dr. Robert J. Kiss, stars Romero and Jurado were cast in the lead roles of Don Pedro de Rivero and Lolita, respectively, for their successes in Hollywood. By 1954, Romero had performed in more than fifty feature films in the U.S., including The Thin Man (1934), Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939), and his star role of the Cisco Kid in The Cisco Kid and the Lady (1939), Viva Cisco Kid (1940), and Lucky Cisco Kid (1940). Jurado, for her part, had more than twenty film credits to her name in Mexican and American pictures. After her turn as Helen Ramirez in High Noon (1952), she would later become the first Latin-American actor to win a Golden Globe and to be nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Señora Devereaux in Dymytryk’s Broken Lance (1954). Jurado can also be seen in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, screening March 22 at the Cinematheque.
The Sword of Granada premiered in February 1954 in Mexico City. The film’s billing as “the first Mexican film made in 3-D” helped to promote it across Mexico City and in Ciudad Juarez, where it played in 25 3-D first-run venues and 10 venues in the flat, 2-D format. With such proximity to Texas and California border towns and wanting to cross-promote the film to larger audiences, the film’s production and release was covered closely by Spanish-language and English-language publications in El Paso, as well as in the San Antonio, TX-based newspaper La Presa. In the United States, Dr. Robert J. Kiss notes that the film premiered at the 800-seat Azteca theater in Phoenix, AZ on February 14th, 1954 as a standalone film. It continued to gain visibility in its one-week run at Los Angeles’ largest Spanish-language theater, the Million Dollar Theater, where it played alongside Luis Buñuel’s comedy El Gran Calavera (1949). Still, despite respectable performances in Arizona, Los Angeles, and New York, the film was given the grandest welcome in Texas. Kiss notes that the film enjoyed lavish premieres in Kingsville, Taft, and San Antonio, and was lauded as “An event that will write a new chapter in the history of Mexican Cinema in the Southern United States.”