María Félix and Cantinflas Star in Gems From Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema

Charitable charlatans, clumsy womanizers, enigmatic dames and even a monster-fighting paladin captured the imagination of Mexico’s audiences during the mid-20th-century golden age of the country’s film industry.

An era of prolific production in all genres and of stars with exclusive studio contracts, it rivaled the Hollywood system in the quality and variety of its output. Today, most homegrown Mexican productions struggle to find screens amid the ubiquitous presence of American blockbusters that entice local moviegoers.

But from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Mexican cinema thrived partly as a consequence of American involvement in World War II. With American resources being allocated to the war effort, Mexican companies saw an opportunity to produce movies for and about their own country that could also travel to other Spanish-speaking territories.

Featuring titles largely from this period, the retrospective “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema” begins Friday at Film at Lincoln Center. Entertainment made for the masses, these movies often set their sights on unlikely heroes and heroines who, despite personality quirks or individual circumstances, exhibited a sturdy moral compass and unshakable pride. They (mostly) do what’s right in the end, even if human weaknesses obstruct their best intentions more than once.

For several decades after their original theatrical runs, most of these films endured in the collective Mexican consciousness and continue to influence popular culture through their uninterrupted availability on broadcast TV. As a child in 1990s Mexico City, I caught fragments when visiting my grandmothers for whom the men and women then on the small screen had been larger than life in their youth.