1950 Cariaco, Venezuela

Caesar Carvajal

1942

Cariaco, Venezuela

Interviewed on February 8, 2026

By Brad Foutz, with translations by Diego Sacchettoni

What was the first movie you remember watching?

One of the first movies La Balandra Isabel llegó esta tarde [The Yacht Isabel Arrived This Afternoon] from 1950… growing up in Venezuela in the 1950s, he grew up in a town called Cariaco. It was semi rural so not super developed, he says they were illiterate but in the sense that they weren’t reading in school. So about ninety-five percent of the successful movies were Mexican movies and the other five were mostly Argentine. Popular western movies were really rare and a pretty elite activity exclusive to the big cities. He can’t remember the name of the first movie he saw, but it was a Mexican movie. 

Within the Mexican film, generally speaking, the Mexican idols were Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete. Now since the Spanish speaking films were so popular, Spain started producing films for Latin America, but these were again still more elevated plots; a little bit more complicated and high quality. They were so much reserved for the metropolitan areas. Same with French and North American movies.

However he highlighted Spanish Mexican director Luis Buñuel. This guy was a very famous Mexican and Spanish director, and he’s still really acclaimed to this day. He remembers watching and still enjoying Perro Andaluz, Los Olvidados, and Viridiana. These are really surrealist and high art films. Importantly, after 1958 in Venezuela, the new more democratic government started opening more colleges, spreading education farther than just Caracas, so they started building lots of colleges in Sucre and Cariaco. So people now didn’t have to go all the way to the capital to get an education. This meant that these films spread to more areas of the country. In the town where he grew up, the theatre wasn’t actually like a theatre, it was an open air where they had a big white wall they would project films onto, and everyone would bring their own chairs. If it rained, the movies would be canceled. 

What was your experience like going to the movies? Who did you go with?

Growing up in Cariaco, the more rural town, his dad worked in the city, so since his whole family was in Cariaco, they would send him to the city during the summer. His aunt lived about three blocks away from where they would screen the movies, so he would actually go pretty often. Him and his cousins and friends would go to the 7pm screenings, which would often be the only light in the city at that time since there wasn’t much electricity. He wouldn’t pay while in Cariaco because one of his uncles ran the movie theatre, so he would just bring his chair and watch and watch.

In the city, Cumaná, where he went to high school, importantly another reason for the rising education in Venezuela was a result of the Spanish civil war in which educated people from Spain left the facism and came to South America where they went on to teach. He had a math teacher from Spain who was ultimately pursued by the Spanish fascists and had to flee to Panama but was ultimately killed.

In Cumaná he remembers three indoor theatres: The Pichicha, Ayacucho, and Paramount –the third being the best. For prices and seating, they had sofa seating and preference. Sofa were long benches in the front, cheaper, only one bolivar. Preference were towards the back and would cost two.  No popcorn sold at all at the movies. People would either go to eat before or after. Personally he would go eat a sandwich at a bar afterwards. Very rare to have theatres selling food inside. 

Since tv’s were rare at the time, during the time before movies they would show a lot of things. They would show trailers for movies that they would be showing later that week, like a three minute scene with the titles. Importantly they also showed news segments and Mighty Mouse cartoons for the kids. For the news segment, very importantly they showed summaries of soccer games. Since there was no radio for the games, you’d read the result in the papers and then go watch highlights at the movies. Everyone loved the Brazilian national team and Pelé specifically, so lots of people loved to go just to watch highlight clips of him. 

While in high school, in the capital, he would ask girls out to go watch the movies. There was a new popular bubble gum from America, Chiclets by Adams, coming in three flavors: cinnamon, mint, and Tutti frutti. He would buy them and then offer them to girls. He and his friends would read the paper and go to the movie review sections by Alvarez Marcano, so they’d look out for whatever movies he’d reviewed that were being screened at one of the three or four local theaters. They were usually screened twice in a day: 7-9 and 9-11. They didn’t have cars so they would walk to the theatres to go to the 7-9 showing. During the weekends, since people were more free, they would screen “bermouth” in the mornings, things like cowboy movies or serialized shows–think telenovelas. So if you were keeping up with a show, you’d have to go every weekend morning to keep up.

What kind of movies did you watch?

He loved Henry Fonda of course but really loved Nito de Ratas [On The Waterfront] with Marlon Brando. He also remembers a Brando film called Last Tango in Paris, which actually got banned in Venezuela until Carlos Andrés Pérez came in and uncensored it.  He remembers the most critically acclaimed big movies were Citizen Kane, Casa Blanca, and then The Godfather. The actor from Casa Blanca Humphrey Bogart was also really popular, so they also liked The Maltese Falcon.

As for Venezuelan cinema, around the 1970s Román Chalbaud made a movie called El pez que fuma [The Smoking Fish] and it’s considered one of the best movies from the golden age of Venezuelan cinema. 

Note: This interview was conducted in Spanish with translations by my friend Diego. Caesar would be verbose in his answers, hence Diego would have to paraphrase. I felt it better to leave the verbiage as close as possible to what Diego said to me and therefore to keep it in third person. Caesar Carvajal is Diego’s step-grandfather.