First of all, kudos to Eddie Muller, who runs the Film Noir Foundation, publishes Noir City magazine, and presents films on Turner Classic Movies in the Noir Alley regular presentation. An important part of what he does is to find and restore film noir films that have lapsed into obscurity, including Los Tallos Amargos (Bitter Stems) from Argentina, direced by Fernando Alaya in 1956.
Los Tallos Amargos is a beautiful (black-and-white cinematography by Ricardo Younis) and intriguing film about Alfredo Gaspar's (Carlos Cores) inability to live up to his German father's ambitions for him, so he turns to scheming and separating fools from their money, with the help of Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos), a bartender. Gaspar settles for a smaller share of the profits so that Liudas can bring his family over from Europe. Gaspar overhears a conversation between Liudas and a bargirl (Aida Luz) and concludes that Liudas is a liar and a cheat and kills his with a hammer, burying him in his backyard. And then Liudas's son shows up.
There are certainly elements of the film noir here, though the mood is one of greed rather than fatalism, with heavily ironic twists and turns that remind one of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. There is a vivid dream sequence of Gaspar's childhood and also a happy love affair between Gaspar's sister and Liudas's son. Alaya does an excellent job of directing the actors in their emotional intensity.
I have never seen any of Ayala's other films after the fall of Peron (who strictly monitored content) though I wonder if they are as populist as Muller claims; after all, many America films were successful artistically and commercially.
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