The archduke Francis Ferdinand of Habsbourg has been killed in Sarajevo (1914 – 06 -28) and the French socialist political man Jean Jaurés, “the Peace Apostle” in Paris (1914-07-31).  France has declared war the first of august of the same year. It is the beginning of the First World War.    

In the same time a man named Alberto Lemur is chased by killers who are happy because of Jean Jaurés’ murder. Lemur is leaving France to escape from his pursuers but before he wants to see his little daughter Gilberta who is in a catholic boarding school in the little town of Andelys near the border.  

"La novela semanal",  edition of the  15th of january  1936,  explains the argument of the film "El 113"

We are again in the country near the French little town called Andelis. A young engineer Marcelo Brichot played by Alfredo Mayo, has to built a new railway and he is collecting measures with a tachymeter.  His foreman, Bordinet, arrives and says him the workers are preparing a strike. But Marcela has seen his fiancée Susana Proust who is approaching on her horse. The engineer   fusses around her.  Later he comes back to his work while Susana visits her friend Gilberta Lemur who is school teacher in the same catholic boarding school where she studied. She has been adopted by Madame  Teresa Dupont, her ex- teacher now retired.

The ingineer Marcelo Brichot (Alfredo Mayo ) is collecting measures with a tachymeter	Her fiancée Suzanne Proust comes to see himin the railway woks

The notary, Mr  Lefevre, has put in different newspapers a notice to find Miss Gilberta Lemur‘s address, because she is the heir of an old great aunt. Tadeo Simón, who now lives with her wife in Parisian slums, discovers the notice and decides to go to see the notary under a false identity. But Mr Lefevre wants to see Gilberta. And Tadeo with his wife have to trump up a new stratagem.

Marcelo Brichot (Alfredo Mayo), with the  supervisors of the railways company, receives the workers	Marcelo Brichot (Alfredo Mayo) pushes away the convict ( Ernesto Vilches who has discovered his daughter

Tadeo Simón, to get great aunt’s money, says he his Alberto Lemur.   But Juan Durand can say it isn’t true.  The murderer and thief is jailed. Durand, now free, is rehabilitated in front of the army in Champ de Mars in Paris.  Gilberta now rich will marry Héctor and Susana will be the wife of the engineer Marcelo Brichot (Alfredo Mayo).

"El 113" is the first sound adaptation of the piece of theatre called “The soldier of Saint Martial” written in 1885 by Valentín Gómez (1843 - 1907) and Félix González Llana (1850-1921).  It was a drama in five acts drawn from a true case, during the peninsular war: a sergeant had been taxed with having killed a count. In fact he had been helped him during his agony.  

In 1914 the famous Spanish cinema pioneer Fructuoso Gelabert helped by José de Togores had filmed "El cuervo del campamento" (The raven of the encampment) with Enrique Guitart (father). This film transposed the store during the Carlist wars.  Some other sources mention too “El calvario de un héroe" (Hero’s Golgotha) directed in 1915 by Adrián Gúal as cinema adaptation from the initial piece. Magín Muriá will fill the last mute version, also in 1915, "El soldado de San Marcial" (The soldier of Saint Martial).

The version by Vilches wants to be more up-to-date and the story takes place in France, which is for us, seventy years later a surprise. But maybe France in this period was some “exotic” country. So it is about the first world year in France (Spain remained neutral), the heroism of French Army, the social preoccupation of this time and homage for Jean Jaurés, the French Socialist and “Peace apostle”. However the disturbances, results of the strikes, don’t seem to be lauded and cause difficulties to the hero, the engineer Brichot but permit the “denouement” of the story with the providential coming back of the convict number 113.  We are very far away from the films of the French “Front Populaire”, prestige of directors as Renoir, Duvivier or Carné. In addition with its way of treating the subject, the film “El 113” looks more like a silent film as theses which had made Vilches ‘fame in Hollywood. 

( *) The penalty at the Toulon convict prison, convicts taking the place of the strikers: we don’t know if it was possible in France in the beginning of the XX century even if the Cayenne convict prison in French Guyana was in existence.

3.- The  directors and the actors

Ernesto Vilches, but we have not to present him, is the artistic director and the main character of the film with the part of the sergeant becoming a convict. 

Raphael J. Sevilla, the technical director, was born in Mexico City in 1905 (He will die in the same place in 1975). He has yet made some films in his own country (and has written too their screenplays) as"Más fuerte que el deber" (1931); "Juárez y Maximiliano" 1934, with the Cuban actor Enrique Herrera as Maximilien of Mexico and  Medea de Novara as his wife Charlotte (This actress was born in 1905 in Vaduz, principality of Liechtenstein). "El ciento trece" is his seventh film in a filmography of 39 titles. It is his unique Spanish film and the unique film made abroad. This Mexican director will finish his career in 1963.

We discover also in the casting: Virginia Zurí (a Mexican actress?) and Marina Alcañiz, born in Madrid, both actresses worked in the first Spanish spoken films made in Hollywood where they know very well Ernesto Vilches.  

We can speak too about Cecilio Rodríguez de la Vega. He has been one of the first Spanish Don Juan in  the cinema in the film «Don Juan Tenorio» directed by Ricardo de Baños in 1908.

The young Luchy Soto (1919-1970), daughter of very famous Spanish actors, Guadalupe Muñoz Sampedro and Manuel Soto, will be the wife of the actor Luís Peña. With “El 113” she goes on with her career begun in 1933 with «Crisis mundial" (1934) by Benito Perojo, with Antoñita Colomé and Fernando Freyre de Andrade. The next year she will be again with Alfredo Mayo in Las tres gracias   and in 1941 in  Sarasate,  Escuadrilla  and   ¡ Harka ! 

We can see too in the casting the name of Moisés Raigor. It is probably Moisés Raigorodsky said the little russian and whose biography we have discovered in the blog http://cubanosenlaguerracivil.blogspot.com/ which gives as reference the collective work,  "Cuba y la defensa de la República Española", 1º edición, Instituto de Historia del Movimiento Comunista y de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba, Editora Política, La Habana, 1981. Moisés was a russian jew of origin, who was born in 1914 in Odessa, and had emigrated when very young with in family to Cuba. Later he became dramatist and musician but yet communist militant in his new country in the thirties. In 1934 he was sent into exile and he arrived in Spain.  Raigorodsky had known Vilches in Cuba when the Spanish director was with his theater company. And Enestro Vilches gave a little role the exiled Cuban to help him to survive. Moisés Raigorodsky died for the Republic camp during the Spanish civil war.

A girl of about 5 years old,  Juanita Poveda , is the little Suzanne, Ernesto Vilches'daughter in "El ciento trece". We tell us her incredible life worh of being a film, and exclusively on our website  www.don-alfredo-mayo.com in our page Juanita Poveda of the section Historical and cinema summaries