Spectacled Birthday
In 1934, the American director Howard Hawks, after arriving in Mexico to make his own Pancho Villa movie, gave Mr. Figueroa an apprentice position behind a film camera. A year later, on a Mexican government grant, Mr. Figueroa went to Hollywood for a mentoring year with Gregg Toland, Orson Welles’s preferred cinematographer. Back in Mexico in 1936, Figueroa shot his first feature film, “Out on the Big Ranch.” His contribution to it was singled out for praise at that year’s Venice Film Festival. He was on an upward track that reached a long, fruitful high point in 1943, when he made his first film with the director Emilio Fernández.
