A night in black and white to celebrate Silvia Pinal, the great diva of Mexico

Everyone was distracted when Silvia Pinal came from the side.

The main room of the Palace of Fine Arts went dark and she shone in the box, focused by a spotlight and by the effect of the light on the sequins of her dress.

The party of the great diva of Mexico began, who this Monday received a tribute to her career of more than seven decades in cinema, theater and television.

Consecrated as the muse of the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and an exponent of the golden age of Mexican cinema, the actress has starred in a black and white celebration a few days after her 92nd birthday on September 12.

Attendees had been waiting for more than two hours to enter.

The surroundings of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, in the center of Mexico City, had been occupied by queues: queues for the general public, for the press, for invited artists.

Many stayed outside when the gates opened after six in the evening.

Inside, awaited the actors who shared with the interpreter the golden years of national cinema, that world in black and white inhabited by Ignacio López Tarso, Martha Ofelia Galindo or Luz María Aguilar in the 1950s.

Interpreters from other generations had also attended, such as Aracelia Ramírez or Roberto D'Amico, who have a teacher in Pinal.

"How are you, Silvia?", actress Diana Bracho began from the stage when the first applause of the night ended.

The greeting was a nod to

a musical theater play that Pinal starred in in the 1990s.

"To talk about you is to talk about an artist who has been a pioneer of cinema, theater and television in our country," continued Bracho.

"A woman," she said, "who assumed to be an actress since she discovered the condition of her being."

The public applauds Silvia Pinal during the tribute. Marco Ugarte (AP)

Pinal came to Mexico City from Guaymas, in the north of the country, to study a "serious" career, as his father wanted.

But she was immediately "seduced by the performance," she recalled during the act one of her daughters, the actress Sylvia Pasquel.

The interpreter reviewed her mother's career from those early years at the Fine Arts School of Acting: her debut with the play

;

her beginnings on television;

the first Ariel as best actress;

her collaborations with Pedro Infante or with Cantinflas, also with Vittorio de Sica or José María Forqué;

the filming of

, the feature film directed in 1961 by Luis Buñuel that established it abroad...

That was the first of the three films that the actress made with the Aragonese director.

The film, a satire on Christian charity, was censored by the Vatican, but Pinal managed to get the rolls out of Francoist Spain to screen it in Mexico.

This is how she remembered it in an interview reproduced during the act this Friday: "I took them out of the cans, because they were heavy, and I carried them in my bag."

With

, Spanish-language cinema won its only Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival.

“I have it in my house and I show it to them... Not when they want.

If you let me know, I'll take them somewhere," joked the actress in another of the projected interviews.

The medal is now protected in the Palace of Fine Arts, as part of the exhibition that completes the tribute to the diva.

The artist later starred in two other films by Buñuel, more than any other actress:

(1962), in which a group of bourgeois is trapped in a room, and

(1964), where Pinal personifies the Devil.

“It is always said 'how lucky Pinal was to work with Buñuel'.

The opposite also applies,” said film critic Leonardo García Tsao from the stage, in a conversation with screenwriter Busi Cortés and fellow critic José Antonio Valdés Peña.

"Not every day you can honor a living legend," said García Tsao.

Above her heads hung the portrait of the artist that Diego Rivera painted in 1956.

Pinal followed the almost two hours of tribute from the box.

The projections of fragments of his works, the speeches and performances later made by the actress and dancer Bianca Marroquín, the singer Fela Domínguez, the actor and director Alan Estrada and Pinal's granddaughter Stephanie Salas.

Along with Pinal, there were several members of her family, a powerful entertainment clan that reeled in 2021 when one of the actress's granddaughters, the model Frida Sofía, accused her grandfather, the Mexican singer and actor Enrique Guzmán, of having sexually abused her and hit Pinal.

At that time, the diva recognized that she was not "indifferent" to what was happening in her family.

“Your grandmother loves you intensely.

We need each other,” she told her granddaughter.

The actress, moved during the act. Marco Ugarte (AP)

The review of Pinal's career continued with a mention of

, the only film that the actress agreed to make for Hollywood, and with her time as a producer and presenter on Televisa, the media giant she co-founded.

There were no mentions, on the other hand, of the political facet of the actress, who became a deputy during the six-year term of the PRI Carlos Salinas de Gortari and a senator in the Administration of Ernesto Zedillo, also of the PRI.

“Ay, mamacita,” Pinal said when she was finally led to the stage in a wheelchair.

The last appearance of her in public of the actress had been in 2017, when her career was celebrated by the Hollywood Film Academy, of which she is a member of her.

This tribute has been the first since then, with a covid-19 pandemic in between, a disease for which she was admitted to the hospital in December.

"I feel so excited," she said, and she wanted to continue.

"We are going to do something very important...", she began, but she could no longer complete the sentence because someone from the post shouted her name and then she left the microphone.

-Silvia!

-What!?

-We love you.

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