There Are No Thieves in This Village | 1
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When Poolhall Junkies premiered in 2002, I remember thinking, “Damn! That’s an
incredible roster of talent for a billiards movie.” The film starred two former Oscar winners –
Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night) and Christopher Walken (The Deeer Hunter), as well the
incredible Oscar-nominated Chazz Palminteri (Bullets Over Broadway). My excitement was
understandably a wee more muted about the casting of Ricky Schroder.
But, if one really wants to experience the
who’s-who, one-two wallop of billiards movie
casting, then the film to start with is There
Are No Thieves in this Village (original
title: En este pueblo no hay ladrones), a
1965 Mexican movie about how an
impoverished community responds when
three billiards balls are stolen from a local
saloon.
Created in response to the Mexican STPC film union’s “First Experimental Film Contest,” a
competition designed to rejuvenate the struggling Mexican film industry, There Are No
Thieves in this Village was the directorial debut (and second prize winner) of Alberto Isaac.
The movie is available to watch in its entirety here, but note it is in Spanish and without
subtitles.
Shot in black-and-white with minimal budget in only three weeks in Mexico City and Cuautla,
the film features a pantheon of modern-day Mexican art and culture intelligentsia. For
starters, the movie is based on the identically-named short story written by the hitherto
unknown, future Nobel Prize in Literature winning author Gabriel García Márquez, who
subsequently had 30 movies made from his stories and novels, including Love in the Time of
Cholera. Marquez also appears in There Are No Thieves in this Village, making it the
first of only two cinematic appearances in his career.
Also appearing in the film as a local priest is the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who the
New York Times referred to in his obituary as “a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth
and a dominant international movie director half a century later.” Six of his films are listed in
Sight & Sound’s 2012 critic’s poll of the 250 films of all time, and three of his films (Tristana;
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; and That Obscure Object of Desire) have been
nominated for Oscars.
Others in the movie include: film director Arturo Ripstein, who won the prestigious National
Prize for Arts and Sciences; artist and iconoclast José Luis Cuevas; esteemed author Juan
Rulfo; Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington; cartoonists Ernesto García Cabral and
Abel Quezada; and critic and journalist Carlos Monsivaís. All of these future cultural
leaders were part of a tight circle of friends kept by director Issac and writer (and future film
critic) García Riera.
There Are No Thieves in This Village | 2
It is debatable whether There Are No Thieves
in this Village is truly a “billiards movie,” as
the only billiards in the film occurs in the
opening sequence of three-cushion billiards.
(For more on this billiards variant, check out the
2005 film Carambola.) In this sense, it is more
akin to the 1991 Swedish film A Paradise
Without Billiards, which depicts an
immigrant’s life in a community that does not
play billiards.
In There Are No Thieves in this Village, it is
the absence of the balls, resulting from an act of
larceny committed by the dim-witted
troublemaker Damaso, that causes a community
to unravel. Initially, the local denizens find
themselves rudderless and without activity.
That idleness turns to racist aggression when
the community identifies a black man as the
culprit of the crime. Damaso, showing no regret
or concern for his actions, sits back like a
passive spectator, as the black man is first
beaten and later sent to sea for his crimes. In
fact Damaso, who only took the billiards balls
when his felonious efforts turned up no other
booty, subsequently even toys with the idea of
forming a gang and stealing additional balls as a
money-making scheme. It is only when his pregnant wife can no longer contain her guilt by
affiliation that Damaso reluctantly attempts to return the billiards balls.[1]
Watching the movie today, I’d say There Are No Thieves in this Village represents a
watershed moment in Mexican film casting (and certainly in billiards movie casting), though
the actual film is just of passing interest. I think this one reviewer said it best:
“Every time that I see this movie the result is the same, what were the conditions of the
epoch to see such an incredible cast of characters. I haven’t seen another movie with so
many artists, at least as important as the artists that appear in this movie… If someone is
interested in Mexican culture at that time this film is absolutely a must.”
Thus, as an end to this post, and as a final postscript, let us say R.I.P. to Gabriel García
Márquez, who passed away earlier this year in April.
[1]
My summary may be slightly inaccurate given both the movie and the short story
were in Spanish. To read the original story, go to:
http://estoespurocuento.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/gabriel-garcia-marquez-en-este-pueblo-n
o-hay-ladrones-cuento/
Check out these related posts:
[Wanted!] A Paradise Without Billiards
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