#551: DEL TORO, Guillermo: Cronos (1993)
DEL TORO, Guillermo (Mexico)
The Booklet
Essay by film critic Maitland McDonagh, a good summation of Del Toro's biography.
Commentary
Geometria, an unreleased 1987 short horror film by del Toro, finished in 2010, with a new video interview with the director.
Documentary
Welcome to Bleak House, a video tour by del Toro of his home office, featuring his personal collections.
Cronos [1993]
Spine #551
DVD
DVD
Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious feature debut with Cronos, a highly unorthodox tale about the seductiveness of the idea of immortality. Kindly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) happens upon an ancient golden device in the shape of a scarab, and soon finds himself the possessor and victim of its sinister, addictive powers, as well as the target of a mysterious American named Angel (a delightfully crude and deranged Ron Perlman). Featuring marvelous makeup effects and the haunting imagery for which del Toro has become world-renowned, Cronos is a dark, visually rich, and emotionally captivating fantasy.
92 minutes
Color
Color
Stereo
in Spanish and English
1:78:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2010
Director/Writer
Del Toro was 29 when he wrote and directed Cronos.
Guillermo del Toro, along with Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, are known as "The Three Amigos of Cinema."
Del Toro began his career as a special effects makeup artist, eventually forming his own company, Necropia. He merged his early cinematic experiments and a lifelong fascination with monsters and the occult into a unique filmmaking style.
He considers his 12 films (to date) to be "one film":
"I cannot pontificate about it, but by the time I'm done, I will have done one movie, and it's all the movies I want ... people say, you know, "I like your Spanish movies more than I like your English-language movies because they are not as personal," and I go "fuck, you're wrong!" Hellboy is as personal to me as Pan's Labyrinth. They're tonally different, and yes, of course you can like one more than the other -- the other one may seem banal or whatever it is that you don't like. But it really is part of the same movie. You make one movie ... Hitchcock did one movie, all his life." [Wikipedia]
Other films by del Toro in the Collection:
The Film
Cronos is a tale of resurrection. The main character is a kindly grandfather who owns an antique store, named Jesús Gris ("gray Jesus") (Federico Luppi).
The rest of the cast -- his wife, Mercedes (Margarita Isabel); his granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath); and Jesús's great nemesis, Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman) are all terrific. Perlman steals the film, actually.
Del Toro paints his films in specific color schemes. This lends a certain type of brilliance to each scene, as well as providing an internal filmic logic to his cinema.
The MacGuffin here is a beautiful 450-year-old gold scarab with mechanical moving parts which deliver a painful -- but potentially immortal -- sting.
What a start to a career!
Film Rating (0-60):
54
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Essay by film critic Maitland McDonagh, a good summation of Del Toro's biography.
"Del Toro has said that were he to make Cronos now, it would be a very different film. And though that's no doubt true, it's hard to imagine its being a better one. In the words of the doomed alchemist who creates the gold bug and learns that immortality comes at a price: suo tempore. Everything in its time."
Directors notes by del Toro. This is fascinating stuff. He describes his use of color schemes in great detail and reveals the backstory of each character in lengthy and precise terms.
A beautiful (real) booklet.
A beautiful (real) booklet.
Commentary
- Del Toro. You can learn a lot about filmmaking listening to this guy. You can tell he is proud of this, his very first film!
- Producers Arthur H. Gorson, Bertha Navarro and Alejandro Springall. Learn how to produce. Actually, the story of this film's financing is a good one.
Short
Geometria, an unreleased 1987 short horror film by del Toro, finished in 2010, with a new video interview with the director.
Documentary
Welcome to Bleak House, a video tour by del Toro of his home office, featuring his personal collections.
Very cool.
Video interview 1
with del Toro, Navarro, and actor Ron Perlman.
Video interview 1
with del Toro, Navarro, and actor Ron Perlman.
I particularly liked the Perlman interview. Sharp guy.
Video interview 2
with actor Luppi.
Stills Gallery
Video interview 2
with actor Luppi.
Stills Gallery
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