Dicen que Soy un Mujeriego ("They Say I am a Womanizer") is a 1949 Mexican comedy-drama film directed by Roberto Rodríguez. This Mexican film classic was made during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.(Spanish) Rincon In this film, Mexican superstar, Pedro Infante co-starred with Golden Age Mexican super star Sara Garcia (“Mexico’s grandmother”) as Doña Rosa, as well as with Silvia Derbez as Flor and child star "La Tucita" María Eugenia Llamas (five years old at the time). In this comedy, Pedro Infante is Sara Garcia's (“Doña Rosa”) philandering grandson. Dona Rosa is a prominent rancher. She deeply loves Pedro, but is constantly trying to get him to behave – with no success. While Pedro is ever popular with the ladies, he has his eye on Flor (Silvia Derbez), the niece of a neighboring rancher. Flor flirts with him and plays him off against the disreputable saloon owner and town mayor, Pablo (Rodolfo Landa). Pablo tricks orphan Tucita into believing she is Pedro's daughter as a way to ruin Pedro's chances with Flor. Everyone is quick to believe that Pedro is Tucita's father. However, in the end, the plot is revealed and Pedro and Flor marry.
The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema This 1949 comic classic was made at the height of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (in Spanish: Época de oro del cine mexicano), which is the name given to the period between 1935 and 1959 where the quality and economic success of the cinema of Mexico reached its peak.García Riera, Emilio (1986) Historia del cine mexicano Mexico Secretaría de Educación Pública The golden era is thought to have started with the film Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1935), which is to this date considered the best of the cinema of Mexico. The movie was a box-office failure by Fernando de Fuentes that followed his box-office smash hit Allá en el Rancho Grande. The quality and box-office success of Mexican films continued after the end of World War II when Mexican cinema became focused on commercial films.Época de oro del cine mexicano, page at angelfire.com
Plot
The movie starts with a woman in bed sitting up and shouting in a startled voice, "My husband!" A man hops out of the bed and exits through the bedroom window. He emerges on the street of a Mexican village and heads down the street toward his horse. However, another woman comes up and starts haranguing him about his inattention to her and she ends by calling him a "canalla" (roughly translated, "you rotten louse"). He kisses her hard, which leaves her breathless as her rides off on his horse while she again whispers "canalla". Across the street, a wedding party is emerging from the village cathedral. Outside, the couple invites the priest to accompany them. He declines, saying that he had to go hunting with Doña Rosa (Sara Garcia). If he doesn't' show up, she'll never speak to him again. They then invite him to their wedding reception that evening, which invitation he accepts.
At Doña Rosa's ranch, Dona Rosa discovers that her grandson, Pedro Dos Amantes (Pedro Infante) has stuffed his bed to look like he was sleeping in it. She angrily demands information about Pedro's whereabouts from her rolly-polly servant Bartolo (Fernando Soto), who is also Pedro's constant sidekick in the movie. She punctuates her demands with sharp blows to his posterior with her walking stick. Pedro finally does ride up, his face covered with lipstick. When Doña Rosa demands to know where he has been, he answers that he was at a board meeting. When she asks about the lipstick on his face, he claims it came from eating mangos. She orders him around the side of the ranch house to wash the lip stick off his face.
The priest rides up while Doña Rosa is still ranting that the only decent ones at that ranch were her dogs. The priest greets her with a "very good day" she replies angrily "demons", which shocks him. She immediately apologizes for the outburst. Then, it strikes her that Pedro has not come back from washing his face. Doña Rosa rushes around the corner and finds Pedro trying to get a kiss from servant girl. She whacks Pedro with her cane and runs off the servant girl.
Then, Doña Rosa, Pedro and the priest go hunting for rabbits. Bartolo has conveniently tied out an assortment of them to shoot. Doña Rosa shoots one and Pedro shoots one. Then, Doña Rosa tells the priest that it is his turn. He clumsily aims his shotgun and it goes off wildly. He says he just couldn't bear to shoot one of "God's little animals". However, Bartolo shouts and points out that he had shot a donkey instead. The priest exclaims that things had turned out worse.
Flor, the niece of the neighboring rancher, rides up to say that her uncle was in grave condition and she needed the priest to come. She says the doctor said "there was nothing more he could do for him". Doña Rosa says she would come along, but Flor knew "how he is". Flor nods her agreement. Pedro offers to help in a very suggestive way. She promptly brushes him off. She and the priest ride off.
When they arrive, Pablo, the town's mayor and the shady owner of the town saloon, is there waiting. He repeats that the doctor had said that there was nothing he could do. The doctor enters the room and finds Flor's uncle eating a turkey with great enthusiasm. The priest says he thought the doctor had said there was nothing he could do. The uncle agrees he said that if he did not stop eating, drinking and smoking, he was going to die and there was nothing the doctor could do. However, he would rather live a short life than live a long one hungry and thirsty. He tells the priest that he should join him, since, at their ages, good eating was all they had left. The priest refuses with disgust.
In the room outside, Flor asks Pablo why he has such a look on his face. She says he is the town mayor and asks him what else he could want. He tells her that what he wants is to marry her. She coyly dodges the question. She mentions that she is going to attend the wedding reception that evening. Pablo says he will see her there. She tells him that he would not be welcome there. Pablo vows to attend anyway. They look in on her uncle and the priest and find them both putting away the turkey.
At the wedding reception, Pedro dances with one girl after another, with each getting dumped to her disgust in her turn. He also sings the "They say I am a womanizer" song. Bartolo brings him a mocking letter from "Anonimo", who claims to be his secret admirer. Pedro ponders who she could be. Pablo shows up to the disgust of all in attendance. Flor heads off a bad situation by dancing with him and suggesting that his presence there is not a good idea. He replies that when he says he is going to do something, he does it.
Pedro and Pablo sit together drinking in Pablo's saloon, where the singer and dancer Luciérnaga (Amalia Aguilar) does a fiery dance. One of the bar patron's is so overcome with the moment that he grabs her and kisses her hard. Pedro hops to his feet and decks the offender. Luciérnaga responds by exclaiming, "Thanks handsome." A short time later, she sends Pedro an invitation, though Bartolo, to join her in her room, which Pedro quickly accepts.
Flor flirts with Pablo shamelessly, leading him to believe that he has a chance with her, if he could only get Pedro out of the way. Flor is also Doña Rosa's choice for Pedro. She offers Pedro advice as to how to court her. But, Flor continues to coyly sidestep his advances. In desperation, Pedro publicly drops all his other girl friends by singing his farewell to them from horseback in the village square, singing that they will always remain as a "butterfly in his soul". They all take it badly.
Finally, after a series of misadventures, Pedro does win over Flor and she agrees to marry him. After trying to win her over by singing her a song while she is milking a cow at her ranch (followed by the usual rejection) Pedro tells his sidekick Bartolo to let a bull calf out of its pen to scare Flor. However, always inappropriate, Bartolo lets a full grown bull out of its pen instead, which chases Flor up an apple tree. Pedro ropes the bull from horse back and leads it back to its pen. However, Flor cannot get out of the apple tree and she does not want Pedro looking up her dress, which he would have to do to help her down. He promises to close his eyes but cannot help but take a peek. Furious, Flor starts to throw apples at him, which causes her to fall out of the tree. Pedro rushes to her aid, but finds her apparently unconscious. Pedro kisses her and she comes to. He starts to explain that he was only trying to give her artificial respiration, but she unexpectedly kisses him back. And thus begins their romance.
However, when Pablo hears of this development, he is outraged and swears that he is going to do something about it. Luciérnaga means "firefly" in Spanish. When Pedro goes to Luciérnaga to tell her that he cannot see her any more, she tells Pedro that she expects him to marry her. Pedro quickly ends his relationship with her. Luciérnaga tells him that "fireflies also have stingers" and swears to herself that he is going to pay. Luciérnaga goes to Pablo, who has just gotten word of Flor's engagement to Pedro, to ask him, as town mayor, to lock up Pedro for the shameful way he had treated her. At which point, he tells her that he has a better idea.
That evening, the small child, Tucita shows up on Dona Rosa's mare at the entrance to her ranch. When Dona Rosa asks Tucita tenderly what she is doing on her mare, Tucita says her mother told her that Dona Rosa was her “granny”. Dona Rosa lovingly takes Tucita from the mare and takes her into the ranch house. She sets her down and gets Tucita to show her a letter she is carrying from Tucita's “mother”, which says that Tucita is Pedro's daughter. The letter is signed “your victim”. The clincher is that Tucita has a photo of Pedro on a string around her neck. Dona Rosa needs little convincing. She strokes Tucita's hair lovingly and tells Tucita that she “alone is the victim”.
At this point, Pedro comes home leading a band and roaring drunk, celebrating his engagement to Flor. Dona Rosa runs off the band and drags Pedro into the house to meet Tucita, telling him that she has a “little present” for him. Inside, Tucita wants to know why the music stopped. Pedro answers that it is because "Grandmother doesn't want it." Then, he realizes that he is talking to a small child. There is then both a humorous and sadly touching scene in which Tucita immediately takes to Pedro as her father, while Pedro tries to figure out what is going on through a drunken haze. He asks Tucita who she is. Tucita addresses him as “papa”. Pedro is very confused by Tucita's presence and asks Dona Rosa if she is being serious. She assures him that she is. Dona Rosa and Pedro show Tucita photos of all Pedro's lady friends, but Tucita does not identify any as her mother. Pedro counts his fingers, considers which lady friends he had seen about the time of Tucita's conception and decides that he could not possibly be Tucita's father – a conclusion Dona Rosa angrily rejects.