{ "id": "ep2h4z0knt", "slug": "ahi-esta-el-detalle", "title": "Ahí está el Detalle", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1940s", "label": "Comedies of the 1940s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1940s" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.latam.t1800.culture", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1800 to 1945: Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800.culture", "path": [ { "id": "geo.latam", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1800 to 1945", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800.culture" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Ahí está el Detalle (1940), Juan Bustillo Oro's Mexican comedy starring Cantinflas in his first feature, about a confusion between a dog and a gangster both named Bobby, ending in a famous trial scene.", "snippet": "Ahí está el Detalle (1940), Juan Bustillo Oro's Mexican comedy starring Cantinflas in his first feature, about a confusion between a dog and a gangster both named Bobby, ending in a famous trial scene.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1940s", "markdown": "# Ahí está el Detalle\n\n**Ahí está el Detalle** is a 1940 Mexican black-and-white comedy directed by Juan Bustillo Oro, starring Mario Moreno as [Cantinflas](https://www.edgepedia.org/cantinflas) in his first feature-length starring role. Its plot turns on a confusion between a rabid dog named Bobby and a gangster called Bobby el Fox-Terrier, and it culminates in a courtroom sequence that made Cantinflas a star of continental reach.[1](https://sic.cultura.gob.mx/ficha.php?table=produccion_cine&table_id=4242) • [2](https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/reviews/2/237874.html) • [3](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/la-epoca-de-oro-del-cine-mexicano-en-la-biblioteca-de-mexico)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Premiere | 11 September 1940, Cine Palacio, Mexico City[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) |\n| Director and writers | Juan Bustillo Oro; screenplay by Bustillo Oro and Humberto Gómez Landero[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) |\n| Production | Grovas-Oro Films, producer Jesús Grovas; photography Jack Draper, music Raúl Lavista[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) • [5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle) |\n| Running time | 112 minutes per the Mexican Ministry of Culture registry; other databases list 109, 130, or about 1 hour 52 minutes[1](https://sic.cultura.gob.mx/ficha.php?table=produccion_cine&table_id=4242) • [4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) • [6](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-171494/) |\n| Main cast | Cantinflas, Joaquín Pardavé (Cayetano Lastre), Sara García (Clotilde Regalado), Sofía Álvarez (Dolores del Paso), Dolores Camarillo (Pacito), Manuel Noriega (the judge)[5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle) |\n| Standing | Ranked number 10 in the 100 best Mexican films list published by the magazine *Somos* in 1994[7](https://columnaalmargen.mx/2021/04/20/la-evolucion-de-cantinflas-en-el-cine/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nCantinflas, a penniless urban rogue, sneaks into the mansion of the businessman Cayetano through his girlfriend Paz, who works there as a maid. Before she lets him eat, Paz demands that he kill the family dog Bobby, which has suddenly gone mad with rabies. Trapped in the house when Cayetano returns early, Cantinflas is hidden alongside Bobby, the ex-boyfriend of Cayetano's wife Dolores, who has come to blackmail her. When Cayetano searches for his wife's supposed lover, Bobby escapes and only Cantinflas is found.[8](https://calac.rice.edu/ahi-esta-el-detalle-0)\n\nDolores then claims that Cantinflas is her long-estranged brother Leonardo, and Cayetano, who wants more of his wife's family inheritance, treats him lavishly. Trouble arrives when Leonardo's partner Clotilde (Sara García) shows up with their sons to press the inheritance and marriage questions, and the police come looking for Leonardo, who is accused of having killed a man named Bobby. Cantinflas confesses to having killed Bobby, meaning the dog, and is put on trial. The real Leonardo finally appears and reveals that he killed Bobby the man because he was being blackmailed; Cantinflas goes free and returns to waiting outside the mansion for food.[8](https://calac.rice.edu/ahi-esta-el-detalle-0) • [4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/)\n\n## The trial scene and the cantinflesco language\n\nThe courtroom sequence is the film's centerpiece. It pushes to the extreme the confusion between the death of the rabid dog Bobby and that of the criminal Bobby el Fox-Terrier, and it showcases Cantinflas's trademark: an incoherent, endless torrent of words full of double meanings and false exits that wears down his opponents. In the film he even gets the judge and the prosecuting attorney talking nonsense on his level in spite of themselves. When everything is finally resolved and everyone ends up \"cantinfleando\", Cantinflas closes with the line: \"ora sí, ¿lo ven?, todo aclarado; si hablando en cristiano se entiende la gente; ¿o no?\".[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) • [5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\n\nAccording to SensaCine, director Juan Bustillo Oro based the final trial on the real 1925 trial of the criminal Álvaro Chapa.[6](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-171494/) The verbal style on display gave Spanish the verb *cantinflear*, to talk a great deal while saying nothing of substance, along with the related words *cantinflada* and *cantinflismo*, later accepted by the Spanish Royal Academy.[9](https://radio.uas.edu.mx/2026/07/14/113338/) • [5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\n\n## Production and context\n\nBustillo Oro, a former law student who had directed his first sound feature, *Dos monjes* (1934), had consolidated his career with *En tiempos de don Porfirio* (1939). With *Ahí está el Detalle* he and co-writer Gómez Landero fused cinema with the verbal theater of the sainete, the zarzuela, and the género chico, and the film brought together for the only time a trio the trade press regarded as exceptional: Bustillo Oro as a specialist in dialogue-based humor, Joaquín Pardavé as an emblem of sophisticated revista-theater comedy, and Cantinflas, whose peladito (Mexican urban rogue archetype Cantinflas personified), an urban rogue with nothing to lose, defeats his enemies by intellectual exhaustion through the abuse of language.[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) • [10](https://culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/sites/culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/files/articulos/descargas/ahi_esta_el_detalle.pdf)\n\nCantinflas had spent years developing the peladito character in traveling tent shows called carpas, taking his stage name from a heckler's shout, and had appeared in shorts and features from 1936 onward, with five advertising shorts made between 1939 and 1940. By 1940, with producer Jesús Grovas hiring established stars Pardavé and Sara García as his supporting cast, he was ready for his first feature. SensaCine counts *Ahí está el Detalle* as his eighth film, while the Ministry of Culture and [Turner Classic Movies](https://www.edgepedia.org/turner-classic-movies) describe it as his first feature-length starring vehicle; the difference reflects earlier short subjects and supporting appearances.[5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle) • [7](https://columnaalmargen.mx/2021/04/20/la-evolucion-de-cantinflas-en-el-cine/) • [3](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/la-epoca-de-oro-del-cine-mexicano-en-la-biblioteca-de-mexico) • [4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/)\n\nThe film belongs to the start of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Where only 29 films were made in Mexico in 1940, the number rose to 37 the next year and passed 100 by the end of the decade, a growth to which Cantinflas and other local comedians who achieved stardom in the period contributed substantially.[5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\n\n## Reception and legacy\n\nThe premiere was an immediate success, and the public made Cantinflas its idol from that moment. The writer Carlos Monsiváis considered it the first great comedy of Spanish-language cinema, and the film is widely treated as the work that elevated Mario Moreno to a star of continental reach; Turner Classic Movies credits it with making him an international star and his country's answer to [Charlie Chaplin](https://www.edgepedia.org/charlie-chaplin), who later called him \"the world's greatest comedian\".[11](https://www.revistaabogacia.com/ahi-esta-el-detalle-el-juicio-de-cantinflas/) • [10](https://culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/sites/culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/files/articulos/descargas/ahi_esta_el_detalle.pdf) • [4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) • [5](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\n\nDespite that standing, the three principals never worked together again. Cantinflas preferred Alejandro Galindo for *Ni sangre ni arena* (1941), and on that shoot he met Miguel M. Delgado, then an assistant director, who became his regular director from *El gendarme desconocido* (1941) onward.[4](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/) Critics have read into the film an irony directed at the hypocrisy of the upper classes, as well as treatment of themes close to taboo in the Mexico of its day, such as women's powerlessness before mistreatment and harassment by men.[12](https://sincroguia-tv.expansion.com/peliculas/ahi-esta-el-detalle--2wLt-SPA)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Ahí está el detalle, Sistema de Información Cultural, Secretaría de Cultura (México)](https://sic.cultura.gob.mx/ficha.php?table=produccion_cine&table_id=4242)\n2. [Críticas de Ahí está el detalle (1940), FilmAffinity](https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/reviews/2/237874.html)\n3. [La Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano en la Biblioteca de México, Secretaría de Cultura](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/la-epoca-de-oro-del-cine-mexicano-en-la-biblioteca-de-mexico)\n4. [Película: ¡AHÍ ESTÁ EL DETALLE! (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1940), Diccionario de Directores del Cine Mexicano](https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/antologia-peliculas/pelicula-ahi-esta-el-detalle-juan-bustillo-oro-1940/)\n5. [Ahi Esta el Detalle, Turner Classic Movies (Frank Miller, 2005)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/93560/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\n6. [Ahí está el detalle - Película 1940, SensaCine](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-171494/)\n7. [La evolución de Cantinflas en el cine, Columna Al Margen](https://columnaalmargen.mx/2021/04/20/la-evolucion-de-cantinflas-en-el-cine/)\n8. [Ahí Está el Detalle, CALAC (Rice University)](https://calac.rice.edu/ahi-esta-el-detalle-0)\n9. [Cuando el absurdo tomó la palabra, Radio UAS](https://radio.uas.edu.mx/2026/07/14/113338/)\n10. [Ahí está el detalle, Clásicos de la Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano (Cultural Goes, Montevideo)](https://culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/sites/culturalgoes.montevideo.gub.uy/files/articulos/descargas/ahi_esta_el_detalle.pdf)\n11. [Ahí está el detalle: El juicio de Cantinflas, Revista Abogacía](https://www.revistaabogacia.com/ahi-esta-el-detalle-el-juicio-de-cantinflas/)\n12. [Ahí está el detalle, SincroGuia TV](https://sincroguia-tv.expansion.com/peliculas/ahi-esta-el-detalle--2wLt-SPA)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1940s*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Ahí está el Detalle\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Ahí está el Detalle](https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle](https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Ahí está el Detalle\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/ahi-esta-el-detalle. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Ahí está el Detalle, Juan Bustillo Oro's Mexican comedy starring Cantinflas in his first feature, about a confusion between a dog and a gangster both named Bobby, ending in a famous trial scene." }