Inspector Calzonzin

A rumour reaches the small town of San Garabato: an inspector from the government is coming in secret to check on conditions. The mayor, Don Perpetuo del Rosal, immediately has everyone who might make the town look bad thrown in jail. Then an indigenous man called Calzonzin arrives, pursued by two men, and everyone takes him for the expected inspector and puts him under their protection. Alfonso Arau directed and played Calzonzin himself; the sources are Gogol’s The Government Inspector and the characters of Los Supermachos, the comic by Eduardo del Río, who signed himself Rius. The film openly mocks local corruption in Mexico and the question of who is counted as visible and who is not. It runs a hundred and seventeen minutes and dates from 1974.