Nuestro Cine – Gabo

“Nuestro Cine” is our occasional feature where we focus on the world of film in the Americas. 
In his career spanning some six decades, recently deceased Latin American journalist and novelist Gabriel García Márquez sold tens of millions of books and received near universal acclaim worldwide.  His great literary skill was acknowledged in the numerous tributes to Gabo including a ceremony on Monday at Mexico City’s Fine Arts Palace and a symbolic funeral in the late author’s birthplace of Aracataca, Colombia.

Not as well known, however, are the movies based on his texts that graced the silver screen.  (One could argue that his most famed adaptation to have been filmed where the scenes in the R.E.M. music video for “Losing My Religion” that where based on one of his short stories).
 
Directed by Francesco Rosi of Italy the 1987 movie adaptation of Chronicle of a Death Foretold was filmed in the Colombian state of Bolivar.  The movie contained numerous European-based actors who were relatively unknown across the Atlantic though British-born Rupert Everett would gain fame for his roles in My Best Friend’s Wedding and in two of the Shrek films.

As one can view below the page break, the first part of the movie shares some of the non-linear structure of the book that is the fictional reconstruction of the real murder of Santiago Nasar.  However the film does differ in that omits many of the dozens of characters included in the novel and also changes the narrator from an anonymous actor to the character of Cristo Bedoya, the closest friend of Nasar. 



Video Source– YouTube user Gabriel Garcia Marquez
 
Online Sources – ABC News; imdb.com; American Songwriter; The Latin Americanist