Flash-back
Article reserved for subscribers
“Let the Beast Die” and “The Black Vampire” by Román Viñoly Barreto, “A Murder for Nothing” by Fernando Ayala: theatrical release of three gems from the 1950s, which magnify the codes of the genre.
In normal times – that is to say without the electoral explosion and the Olympic Games in sight – summer is a rather calm period, conducive to cinephile (re)discoveries and other dives into the cinematographies of yesterday and elsewhere. After the nuggets of the Mexican golden age, the Camellia Films highlight an even more unknown part of South American cinema: the Argentine film noir of the 1950s, the flagship of the classical age which has nothing to do with it. envy of its Hollywood cousins. The feverish splendor of the three thrillers hitting theaters this week – Let the beast die et the black vampire by Román Viñoly Barreto, A Murder for Nothing by Fernando Ayala – gives a striking insight into the prodigious vitality of this cinema snatched from oblivion thanks to the film collector Fernando Martín Peña – to whom we also owe the discovery in Buenos Aires of a complete copy of Metropolis by Fritz Lang, thought to be lost forever.
Produced under the mandate of caudillo Juan Perón, these magnificently restored black pearls embrace the codes of the genre – urban night, call of darkness, pincers of destiny between sticky fatalism and disenchantment, profundis voice-over, aesthetic heritage of expressionist cinema with its ballets of disproportionate shadows, its chaotic diagonals, its framing
