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Reviews
Pelota de trapo (1949)
An Argentine Hit of the late 40s
An Argentine movie critic (José Miguel Couselo) called Leopoldo Torres Ríos' movies "The cinema of sentiment" and he was right. "Pelota De Trapo" was his most successful hit in the genre. A movie combining scenes of childhood, a love story and the number one Argentine sport (soccer) could not fail and it didn't. Torres Rios directed this movie with his habitual expertise with a roster of experimented actors and actresses: the story of Eduardo Díaz (Armando Bo), a child raised in poverty who becomes a refulgent soccer star... and what happened next. Uncommon for that time, the production budget was generous and the movie shows so. Not the best Torres Ríos' film but for sure, at least in Argentina, the viewers' favorite, the most popular one.
El crimen de Oribe (1950)
An excellent and unfairly forgotten movie
"El Crimen de Oribe" (The Crime of Oribe) is one of the best movies of the so-called Golden Era (the 40s) of the Argentine cinema. It was very well directed by one of the best Argentine directors ever, Leopoldo Torres Rios who allowed his son, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson to co-direct the film along him. Based in a short story (not a novel) by Adolfo Bioy Casares, "El perjurio de la nieve" (The perjury of the snow), the film is a wonderful -and very dramatic and romantic- predecessor of the literary current later known as "Magic Realism". Very well photographed in black and white, it had very good actors like Roberto Escalada and Carlos Thompson and a very impressive performance by Raul de Lange (not a professional actor but a musicologist and composer). Even a mediocre actress, Maria Concepcion Cesar, looked and worked very satisfactorily. It was one of Torres Ríos' sweetest and most beautiful films.
Cuba (1979)
"Cuba", a piece of history, a deliciously sad love story
Richard Lester had the same "bad luck" than -let's say- Orson Welles. Lester's first movies on The Beatles were masterpieces, without any doubt. These were bad news for Lester's later pictures because everybody was expecting wonderful things like "Hard Day's Night" or "Help". And, simply, Lester was unable to deliver. OK, with a few exceptions. "Cuba" was one of them (and maybe "Petulia" was the other). "Cuba" is a great movie. Having as a backdrop the last few days of Batista's dictatorship in Cuba (with notable dramatic appeal and amazing historical accuracy), Lester carefully develops a very sad and beautiful love story. Sean Connery and Brooke Adams as the lovers who meet again after fifteen years are really superb. Chris Sarandon is so perfect a villain that you would like to kill him with your own hands. But the most important issue is Lester's ability to create an atmosphere of disenchantment, of sadness looking at all these people who cannot, who will not ever understand how to love each other and live in peace.