Film Alert 101: Sixty Years of Art Cinema 1960-2020 : Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - Latin America - 6 (50) Argentina

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (1967) b.24 Fernando Solanas b.36 Leonardo Favio b.38

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Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (1924-78), son of Leopoldo Torres-Rios, a prolific, “occasionally very interesting film director” from the 30s to the 50s, was the only internationally known Argentinian director at least until the late sixties. Leopoldo worked as an assistant from the age of 15 on his father’s and other director’s films being more interested in a literary pursuits (he was a published poet) until making Dias de Odin/Days of Hatred (1954), co-scripted with Borges from his short story “Emma Zunz” the film described by Edgardo Cozarinsky who worked as a writer on some of Nilsson’s films, “as the most exciting film ever made in Argentina - proof that, on native ground. you could work imaginatively with sounds and images, ellipses and voice-over.”

Torre Nilsson directed 21 features, 1954-74, the fifth El Protegrido/The Protégé (1956), one of his personal favourites, was the only film he made from his original script. Roy Armes notes that many critics found the influence of Antonioni in his harsh portrayal of the film world. Nilsson’s next feature, La Casa del Angel/The House of the Angel (1957), the first screenplay collaboration with his wife, writer Beatrice Guido, was well received at Cannes and was widely screened on the developing international film festival circuit. The central theme of the destruction of an adolescent girl’s virginal innocence, contains a sharply critical portrayal of upper middle class life and institutions in the 1920s. In contrast, his following film, El Sequestrador/The Kidnapper (1958), is a study of poverty “comparable in some ways to Bunuel’s Los Olvidados” (ibid).

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson

Made at the beginning of a period between 1957-63, when a Iiberal cultural policy allowed a short-lived energetic attempt at independent production, Angel established Nilsson's international reputation but it was not followed by any general circulation of Latin American cinema. Nilsson nevertheless followed The House of the Angel with a succession of baroque features often in collaboration with Guido as scriptwriter returning repeatedly to “themes of sexual initiation and political and religious hypocrisy.” Corazinsky claims that Nilsson “rejected Peronism even when latter-day opportunists tried to make it look fashionably left-wing.” Richard Roud describes Guido's “truly Gothic sensibility” as combining with Nilsson's “Wellesian mise en scène” in the Columbia Pictures financed, Eo Ojo de la Cerradur /The Eavesdropper (1964), in a fusion of two major themes: “the denunciation of Argentinian fascism and a scathing examination of a self- destructive claustrophobic world” (Critical Dictionary vol 2 1006)

House of the Angel

Nowell-Smith reminds us that not only were films from Latin American countries not circulating in Europe or North America but they did not circulate much in Latin America outside the country of origin either. From 1960 this began to change. In Argentina during the left-wing presidency of Arturo Frondizi (1958-62) a small new art cinema developed, more a new ripple than wave, dismissed as 'bourgeois' by radical detractors, but nevertheless a significant breakthrough. In addition to Torre Nilsson new filmmakers emerged, although still marginal in the industry, such as David Kohon (Tres veces Ana/Anna Three Times Over 1961), and Miguel Antin (La cifra impar/Odd Number 1962) or, if established, changed course, at least temporarily as in the case of Fernando Ayala, for example ( 'Making Waves' p.177).

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino

During a time of the restoration of increasingly severe censorship under restoration of military rule, between 1966-73, Fernando Solanas (1936-2020) and Octavio Getino (1935-2012) worked clandestinely to film more than 180 hours of interviews with intellectuals, labour leaders, workers et al. Most of the time they were using only a non-synchronous 16mm spring-wound Bolex. Vast amounts of newsreel footage were also gathered, documenting Juan Peron's rise to power and presidency 1946-55, and overthrow by a military coup. Solanas and Getino supported Perónism, despite its failings, as “an enemy of the interests of the neocolonial system.” They denounced the cultural colonialism that normalised Latin American dependency. Neo-colonialist ideology, they argued, functioned even at the level of cinematic language, leading to the adoption of the ideological forms inherent in the dominant cinema aesthetic.

The resultant film is a chronicle and impassioned denunciation of western imperialism in more than four hours and three parts, La Hora de los Hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) which was screened 'underground' all over Argentina often on Super 8mm with the aim of opening a dialogue with the audience. The first part “Neocolonialism and Violence” (95 mins) is dedicated to Che Guevara in an analysis of the daily violence, neo-racism and ideological war in Argentina and the rest of Latin America. The second part, “Act of Liberation” (120 mins) with notes, testimonies and debate in a chronicle of Perónism (1945-55), is dedicated to the Argentinian working class*, followed by “Chronicle of Resistance” in the violent decade (1955-65). The more subversive and committed third part, “Violence and Liberation” (45 mins), is dedicated to the “New Man” born out of this war of liberation. At the end, following the death mask of Che Guevara held on the screen for several minutes, a banner was shown proclaiming “Every spectator is a coward or a traitor” (Frantz Fanon). The film was intended “as a Film Act” played out in Argentina accompanied by tapes of songs, marches and poems preliminary to debate and prelude to audience participation.

Solanas and Getino followed up the film with a manifesto, 'Towards a Third Cinema' - of which The Hour of the Furnaces is a paradigm of Third Cinema first advanced as a rallying cry in the late 60s for an anti-colonial cinema of liberation, not just directed against neo-colonial oppression in Latin America and Africa. Solanas and Getino declared that this cinema of the struggle against imperialism as “the most gigantic cultural, scientific and artistic manifestation of our time.“ As the antithesis of First Cinema which is any cinematographic expression […] likely to respond to the aspirations of big capital,” the paradigm of which is the ubiquitous 'Hollywood movie’, not confined only to the First and Second worlds. Second Cinema,politically reformist, formally experimental or radical auteur-based cinema, is dismissed by Solanas and Getino as expressive of the concerns and aspirations of the middle stratum, the petit bourgeoisie, but of little relevance in the face of repression of the kind unleashed by neo-Fascist forces like the Latin American military. “Nihilistic, mystificatory, it runs in circles… cut-off from reality...As in the first cinema you can [also] find documentaries, political and militant cinema […]. Both good and bad auteurs may also be found in Third Cinema which, generally speaking, gives account of reality and history in political terms, for the expression of a new culture […] an open category, unfinished, incomplete […] a research category […] What is required is to make Third Cinema gain space in all its forms […]” (Cinemaction 1979).**

“Third World film theorists, in their revolutionary enthusiasm and their synergistic approach to theory and practice, recalled the 1920s montage theorists from the Soviet Union. Like them, they too were filmmakers as well as theorists and the questions they asked were at once aesthetic and political.” In a 1958 essay Glauber Rocha suggested that Latin American cinema could be invented dialectically, on the basis of a fusion of two apparently antagonistic models proposed by Zavattini and Eisenstein. “Indeed, the Third World theorists made frequent reference to the Soviet theorists, while rejecting the “socialist realist” model that emerged in the 1930s” (Stam 101). The third worldists developed an ongoing programmatic, summarised in his book Film Theory by Robert Stam, in a set of 20 interrelated questions (p.101-2) ranging from : “how could cinema best give expression to national concerns? ” and “what areas of social experience had been neglected by the cinema? ” to “what was the relation between Third World filmmakers (largely middle-class intellectuals) and the “people” whom they purported to represent?”

Following the manifestos of the late 60s, in Latin America, Third Cinema did gain some traction in the 70s and 80s, in Europe, the UK and North America, as a specifically dynamic concept which was absorbed/relocated in a transformed mediascape.

Because based on “the assumptions of Third World’ intellectuals expressing only ‘local concerns’,” Stam suggests, “or, because their essays were so overtly political and programmatic, this body of work has rarely been seen as forming part of the history of “universal” - read Eurocentric- film theory.”

Juan Moreira

The brief return of popularly elected Peronist government produced some popular quality films such as Juan Moreira (1973), written and directed by Leonardo Favio (1938-2012), based on the life of a legendary gaucho folk hero, the film breaking box office records. Favio began his career as a director with two critically successful ‘films of the year’: Crónica de un nino solo/Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965), the realistic portrayal of an 11 year old boy’s struggle to deal with harsh conditions, inside and outside reform school, and El Romance del Anticeto y la Francisca (1968) in which a young man, accustomed to solitude, finds himself romantically entangled in relationships with the sweet-natured Francesca and the provocatively alluring Lucia. Favio, after beginning as a successful writer-director also embarked on a career as a singer who became immensely popular in Argentina but also across Latin America. *

Leonardo Favio

The relaxing of censorship restrictions in 1973 meant a peak year for the film industry of 36 features and record box office receipts. There was talk of a “new Argentine cinema.” Hour of the Furnaces was given limited commercial screenings during the political “thaw.” The Marxist Grupo Cine de la Base clandestinely produced and independently distributed Las Traidores / The Traitors (1973) directed by a founding member of the Group, Raymondo Gleyzer, innovatively incorporating documentary footage in a layered fictional narrative critiquing union corruption. The return of Perón from 20 years exile in Franco's Spain and his election as president was short lived. Following his death from cancer after only 9 months, a junta again seized power in the midst of political and economic crisis in 1976, instituting 8 years of repressive military rule. Gleyzer was abducted from his home in May 1976 by a military death squad, one of many thousands who were tortured and murdered. In 1983 popular insurrection and general disaffection compelled the junta in to step down.

Raymondo Gleyzer

Solanas returned to Argentina from exile in1983, making several features in the late 80s. In Sur/South (1988) the central character is released from prison in 1983 at the end of military rule and comes to terms with anger at his crushed life in prison through a series of largely reimagined encounters with his past. In El exilo de Gardel/Tangos (1985) A group of Argentinians exiled in Paris decide to put on a tango-ballet dedicated to Carlos Gardel, a legendary tango star. (Solanas collaborated with tango composer Astor Piazzolla on several film soundtracks). El viaje/The Journey (1992) follows the journey of a young man by bicycle from snow-bound Tierra del Fuego to the Amazon in search of his 'real' father, an anthropologist working somewhere in the Amazon, during which the teenager comes to understand more about his Latin American past. Solanas later served as a senator in the national parliament 2013-19, and was appointed as Argentine ambassador to UNESCO in 2019. He died of Covid-related illness in November 2020.

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* Four polls for the top 100 Argentinian feature films conducted at intervals between 1977-2022 along the lines of the Sight and Sound decennial world poll by various cultural institutions including the Mar del Plata Film Festival and the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts. About 1000 participants voted by invitation. In the most recent of the four polls in 2022, two of Leonardo Favio’s sixties features were still in the top ten - El Dependiente/The Store Assistant (1969) number 4, The Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965) at no. 5 - with Juan Moreiraand The Romance of Anicito and Francisca at 11 and 13. Hour of the Furnaces was (1969) 6th and Raymundo Gleyzer’s The Traitors at 17. Lucrecia Martel’s La Cienega/The Marsh (2001) was voted no.1 by a wide margin, with Martel’s Zama (2019) at no.19. Torre Nilsson’s The House of the Angel number 2 in 1977, was placed 22nd in 2022.

** Solanas and Getino stated the goal of Third Cinema is to “dissolve aesthetics in the life of society.” Third (‘research’) Cinema examples : Terra em transe, Os Fusis, and Macunaima see Brazil part 2, 6(49) ; The Traitors, The Hour of the Furnaces , see Argentina 6 (50) above; Forthcoming entries will include Allende and Popular Unity, see Chile 6 (51) ; Sanjines and the Ukamaru group see Bolivia 6 (52); One Way or Another see Cuba part 2, 6 (54) ; Sembene see Senegal 6 (57)

Addendum: The legacy of Perónism

From 1930-76 Argentina experienced six army coups. The 1943 coup supported the Axis powers - the Argentinian government was modelled after the Fascist Italian government. Juan Perón was one of the coup leaders but as Secretary for Labour and Social Welfare he veered off the path set by the conservative army by setting out to improve the living and working conditions of the working class by supporting the unions including positions in the government. Perón was briefly jailed but was released after mass protests and was subsequently elected President of Argentina 1946-55, 1974-75.

Perón was exiled by a military coup in 1955. Perónism was banned and followed by a military dictatorship and then civil governments. Perón returned from exile for a short-lived assumption of power in 1974 temporarily lifting oppressive military rule; he died in office in 1975. Perónism, with twists and turns, continued to dominate Argentina’s political life, “deeply woven into the national fibre,” in a country experiencing endemic economic crises. Solanas was an active supporter of Perónism (also known as Justicialism) reflected in “the chronicle of the Perónism“ section of The Hour of the Furnaces.

Historically Perón following a ‘non-aligned’ foreign policy (he was a personal friend of Che Guevara). Widely fluctuating terms of trade resulting in fluctuating exchange rates for the peso and debt defaults were followed by recurring IMF bail-out loans over the decades. Stemming from variably ineffective economic management resulting in periods of uncontrolled inflation, Perónism’s mix of economic populism and nationalism maintained its continuing support base in the trade unions and the informal economy through social movements based in the poorer suburbs of the cities. The postwar export boom tapered off and inflation and corruption grew. One of Perón’s salient legacies was the CGT labour federation which remained one of the nation’s most powerful institutions even after his exile.

Argentina is “the only country in modern economic history to have fallen from rich-world status back into the middle-income bracket” (The Economist). Juan Perón in his first term undertook widespread nationalisation of British and American economic interests while working with Argentina’s business oligarchy and benefitting, at least in the short term, from a compliant central bank. Universal social security, a populist version of Roosevelt’s New Deal, was introduced by Perón. Until her early death from cancer in 1952, his wife Eve ‘Evita’ Duarte, herself born into poverty, maintained close identification with the less powerful in society who continue to keep her memory alive in Argentina.

As a result of variously inadequate responses through decades by often weak and divided Perónist governments, economic crises saw a peak of three figure inflation; the Peronist party lost its majority in the Congress for the first time in 40 years. An eccentrically forthright, radical right wing libertarian, Javier Milei, was elected president in December 2023. Milei is a subscriber to the economics of Thatcherism rather than Trump: fiscal discipline, free trade, free markets, an open economy and policies that align with each other combined with an “infinite contempt” for big government and socialism.

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Edgardo Cozarzinsky “Torre Nilsson Remembered” Sight and Sound Winter 1978/9 p.29

John Mraz “Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino” International Dictionary Vol 2 Directors Ed.C. Lyon

Julianne Burton “The Traitors” Film Quarterly Fall 1976

Various, Argentine Cinema Tim Barnard ed. 1986

Jim Pines, “Third World on the Screen” Movies of the Sixties ed. Ann Lloyd 1983

Paul Willemen and Jim Pines eds. Questions of Third Cinema BFI 1989

Bhaskar Sarkar, “Third World Cinema” Encyclopedia of Film Theory eds. Branagan & Buckland 2015

Robert Stam “Third World Film and Theory” Film Theory An Introduction 2000

Roy Armes Third World Film Making and the West 1987 ; short bio-portrait of Torre Nilsson as one of “five directors of the year’ in International Film Guide 1967.

Previous entries in this series can be found if you click the following links

Sixty Years of International Art Cinema: 1960-2020 - Tables and Directors Lists to Accompany Bruce Hodsdon's Series

Notes on canons, methods, national cinemas and more

Part One - Introduction

Part Two - Defining Art Cinema

Part Three - From Classicism to Modernism

Part Four - Authorship and Narrative

Part Five - International Film Guide Directors of the Year, The Sight and Sound World Poll, Art-Horror

Part Six (1) - The Sixties, the United States and Orson Welles

Part Six (2) - Hitchcock, Romero and Art Horror

Part Six (3) - New York Film-makers - Elia Kazan & Shirley Clarke

Part Six (4) - New York Film-makers - Stanley Kubrick Creator of Forms