The Minister and Me

Mateo Melgarejo is a public scribe in Santo Domingo, a neighbourhood north of the centre of Mexico City, writing petitions for people who cannot read. A friend living as a squatter asks for his help in getting a land title regularised. Melgarejo goes from office to office, gets nowhere, and finally writes to the cabinet minister. The letter works: the minister summons him and puts him in charge of reforming the bureau. It is one of Cantinflas's later films and fits his mould exactly: long, fast speeches full of wordplay; lectures delivered to officials; and, at the end, giving up the post and going back to the neighbourhood. Aiming directly at Mexican bureaucracy and bribery was notable for the period it was made in. But the film offers as its solution not a change to the system, only one well-meaning man dropped into it, and its criticism goes no further than that. Miguel M. Delgado directed dozens of films with Cantinflas.