María Candelaria

In an interview with journalist Elena Poniatowska, Dolores Del Río remembered how this movie came to be: "Every year, on my birthday, I make a breakfast: a batch of tamales, atole, and champurrado. On that day my friends come and bring me gifts. That year, Emilio Fernández didn't have a cent and, sitting at Kiko's, he thought: 'I can't go to see Lolita emptyhanded.' He spent the afternoon trying to resolve this difficult problem when it occurred to him: 'I am going to gift Lolita a film story!' He spent the entire night writing on paper napkins on a coffee table at Kiko's. The next morning, he came all shy with stack of paper napkins: 'This is your birthday gift!' And at eight in the morning, he put the script of María Candelaria in my hands... The next day, I read María Candelaria to my friends and they all thought it was excellent. The producers besieged Emilio so that he would sell them the script and he replied, 'That story belongs to Lolita. It's not mine. If you want to buy it, buy it from her.'"

Don Damian (Miguel Inclan) is wearing different suits in the church confrontation scene - one black, the other striped (approximately 45th minute)

Featured in Dolores del Río - Princesa de México (1999)