BEAUTIFUL DREAMER (1952)
(a.k.a. EL BELLO DURMIENTE)
Article #1017 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-27-2003
Posting Date: 5-25-2004
Directed by Gilberto Martinez Solares
Featuring German Valdes (Tin Tan), Lilia del Valle, Wolf Ruvinskis

A caveman is engaged in a struggle with a rival for the love of a cavewoman.

At this point I have seen several foreign movies in their native languages without subtitles, and usually my reaction is one of head-scratching inconclusiveness. There are those handful of movies, though, that still seem to come across despite the fact that you can’t understand what’s being said, and this is one of them. Part of it is that it’s a caveman movie, and the pleasures of those movies usually have little to do with clever dialogue; it’s to see dinosaurs (in this case, puppets) and men and women in skimpy costumes. The fact that this is also a slapstick comedy also helps, due to the fact that it relies on visual jokes rather than verbal ones. German Valdes is in his element here, and his energy makes this romp rather enjoyable. It gets a little more difficult to follow when the action moves to the modern times, with our hapless caveman trying to cope with a world in which his usual methods of communication (rubbing noses, patting people about the face with three-stooges-like gestures, and hitting people over the head with clubs, the latter being extremely common) are no longer acceptable, but even here some of the plot elements and themes come through (including one involving either reincarnation or ancestral memories). For anyone wishing to try their luck at watching an unsubtitled and undubbed foreigh movie, this is one that I’d recommend. Incidentally, Wolf Ruvinskis would go on to play Neutron.