A Journalist Smashes the Printing Press to Stop an Article from Being Published

The reporter’s destruction of the printing press is a desperate attempt to prevent the publication of an exposé about a retired star’s private life. In the film story Molina recounts, the act turns a personal and romantic conflict into an irreversible public rupture: the edition is ruined, but the reporter also loses the profession to which he can no longer return.

Background and Discovery

The sabotage follows an earlier rupture between the reporter and the singer. After he destroys an article for her, she offers him money as payment for the favor. He rejects it and leaves, angered by seeing her with the magnate; he leaves behind the lyrics he has written for her. His refusal of payment does not resolve the conflict, and he withdraws from work, moving from bar to bar while the newspaper tries unsuccessfully to find him.

Days later, he sees an announcement in the same daily paper promising an exclusive account of the private life of a famous performer retired from show business. He goes to the newspaper’s press office late at night. The night watchman admits him without suspecting his purpose, and in his former office he finds that the drawers have been forced open and another reporter has taken his place. The material in the desk has been found and is being used for the promised story. The discovery makes the threat immediate: the newspaper is preparing to publish information he had left behind.

The Pressroom Sabotage

The reporter travels to the printers, far from the office, and arrives in the morning, when the afternoon edition is already rolling off the presses. In desperation, he takes a hammer and smashes the machinery. Ink spills across the works, ruining the printing and destroying the edition rather than merely delaying its publication. The damage is described as amounting to millions of pesos, making the intervention an act of outright sabotage.

The timing gives the scene its sharp reversal. The reporter has been unable to make the newspaper listen to him or even bring him back to work; at the press, he can still stop its machinery, but only by destroying it. His action prevents the edition from going out, while converting his protest into damage for which he cannot simply resume his former life.

Consequences and Aftermath

After the sabotage, the reporter disappears from the city. The newspaper union expels him, ending any possibility that he will work as a newspaperman again. He drifts through drunken spells and eventually reaches Veracruz, seeking memories of the singer and of the song associated with their earlier meeting. The pressroom act thus does not settle the emotional conflict that preceded it; it leaves him isolated from both his job and the person he loves.

The film’s later scenes keep that loss in view through music and belated recognition. The singer performs while thinking of the reporter, and the magnate later finds her living in poverty, apologizes, and returns her jewels. These developments do not undo the reporter’s expulsion or restore his career. The destroyed edition remains the point at which his private distress becomes a material act with lasting consequences.

Narrative Role

Molina tells the episode as part of a film narrative within the prisoners’ conversation. Its sequence is built from familiar objects and actions—the announcement, the forced desk drawers, the hammer, the ink, and the ruined presses—so that the reporter’s emotional crisis takes the form of a visible intervention in the machinery of publication. The contrast is consequential: he can prevent one edition from appearing, but cannot recover his position at the newspaper or reverse the consequences of his departure.