The Secret Formula · reception & legacy
1965 · Rubén Gámez
How The Secret Formula has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It won Mexico's first-ever Experimental Film Competition in 1965 and then spent decades as a barely-screened legend, with Gámez sidelined by the industry it critiqued; today critics rank it among the ten greatest Mexican films ever made — a 2020 poll of Mexican critics placed it at #9 of all time.
What's debated
The eternal split: is it a blistering anti-imperialist statement or 45 minutes of gorgeous inscrutability — and does a 45-minute film even count as a feature?
Its footprint
Its alternate title says it all — 'Coca-Cola en la sangre' — and the image of Coca-Cola dripping into a patient's veins became Mexican cinema's definitive shorthand for cultural imperialism, still invoked whenever the country debates its relationship with the US.
Where it stands
A deep-cut cult object and the founding text of Mexican experimental cinema — canonical to Mexican cinephiles, a badge-of-honour discovery for everyone else.