Director Román Viñoly Barreto
THE BLACK VAMPIRE (El vampiro negro) B+
Argentina (80
mi) 1953
d: Román Viñoly Barreto
Virtually unseen outside Argentina, discovered by film
historian Fernando Martín Peña, this film is making its American debut at the
Film Noir Festival traveling around the country. Originally screened in Spanish at the San
Francisco Noir Fest in January, 2014 with projected American subtitles, this is
a brand new, recently subtitled 35mm print funded by the Film Noir Foundation,
and while there is clear evidence of print damage throughout, this doesn’t
detract from the overall look of the film, which is oftentimes
spectacular. Becoming only the third
film to tackle the familiar territory of Fritz Lang’s M (1931), the
story of the pedophile child murderer, and while there are similarities, such
as a blind man recognizing the tune he whistles as Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, Fritz Lang's M - Hall of the
Mountain King Whistling (Grieg ... YouTube (10 seconds), or the criminal
underground turning on him in an elaborately staged manhunt, this South
American version is unique in shifting the emphasis away from the murderer
himself, instead focusing on the harrowing life of a beautiful cabaret singer
Amalia, Olga Zubarry, who accidentally witnesses him throw the body of a young
child into the sewer before fleeing the scene.
While typical noir films feature an alluring femme fatale in contrast to
the so-called morally good female role, where the male character is caught up
in circumstances where he has to make a choice between these two women, South
American films switch the sexual identities and instead feature a strong female
lead character, where she’s tempted by the narcissistic behavior of a lowlife
gangster and the supposedly morally upright behavior of a prosecutor. While you’d think this shift in sexual
emphasis would alter the chemistry of film noir, losing the grim realism of a
male loner, instead it expands the role of the femme fatale from a secondary
side character to the lead, seeing the world through her eyes, even integrating
her storyline with the murderer by the end, where this is the only version of M (1931)
that expresses the psychological view of the mother of an abducted child. This seismic shift is the real intrigue of
the film, which is expressed through a B-movie, melodramatic hysteria, using an
exaggerated visual scheme by cinematographer Aníbal González Paz that couldn’t
be more dynamically appealing, where the interior mood of the film resembles
Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” (Original file).
Shot in black and white on the streets of Buenos Aires, a
city gripped in the terror of a serial child murderer, two parallel stories are
told simultaneously with each character exhibiting a double life, a seemingly
respectable, mild-mannered professor (“el professor”) Teodoro (Nathán Pinzón)
that tutors young female students in his furnished flat without incident while
secretly abducting young infant girls as a psychopathic pedophile known as the
“Black Vampire,” renowned for his virtual invisibility, leaving no trace of his
presence behind, and also Amalia (Zubarry), an attractive showgirl and featured
attraction in an underground nightclub run by gangsters, which hides her real
identity as Rita, the mother of a young daughter who lives elsewhere,
presumably protecting her from the shame of her mother’s profession, which is
the means of providing for her support. Zubarry
was a major star in Argentine cinema, making over 80 films while married to the
president of the Argentina Sono Film company and was known as Argentina’s
“Marilyn Monroe,” the first Argentinean actress to perform a nude scene in EL ÁNGEL
DESNUDO (1946), though a flesh-colored mesh stood between the actress and the
public. The director Carlos H.
Christensen was responsible for sustaining the lie for years, claiming you have
to feed the myth to sell tickets. While
she exudes sensuality with round features and suggestive lips, her face always
perfectly lit, she fends off unwanted male attention with relative ease, but is
startled during a costume change in her dressing room at what she sees out the
window, initially shown only in shadows on the wall, becoming the shape and
form of the Vampire, inducing a blood curdling scream. While Amalia is initially urged to keep quiet
from the owner, Gastón (Pascual Pellicota), so as not to attract unwanted
police presence, it’s only a matter of time before her secret is revealed. Enter Dr. Bernar (Roberto Escalada) from
homicide, also called “el professor” by his peers, a man dressed for magazine
covers with a handsome face and a perfectly groomed pencil moustache, a matinee
idol equal in every respect to Zubarry, yet he runs his department with an iron
fist, arresting anyone on the scene.
Bernar has a paralyzed wife (Gloria Castilla) in a wheelchair at home that
is unable to conceive a child, making him an overprotective husband, where he
doesn’t arrest Amalia, developing a soft spot for her plight, but visits her
later in her home expecting sexual favors.
When he’s rebuffed, he threatens to take her daughter away, claiming her
sleazy profession makes her morally unfit.
This is not at all a shot-for-shot remake of the Lang film,
but one that stakes out its own territory as a South American melodrama, using
over-illuminated close-ups, exquisite use of deep focus, wild angles and shot
composition, grim street detail, and plenty of THE THIRD MAN (1949) style
expressionist shots from the underground sewer system, where the film continues
to provide a feeling of panic and hysteria.
The relationship between Bernar and his paralyzed wife predates Buñuel’s
surrealist BELLE DE JOUR (1967) where it’s the paralyzed husband that causes
the sexually repressed wife, Catherine Deneuve complete with fantasies and
daydreams, to spend her afternoons working in an upscale brothel. In an interesting play on this theme, Amalia
actually visits the home of Dr. Bernar, hoping for some help after having
received a court summons to take her daughter away, and instead meets his sympathetic
wife who can’t believe her husband would do such a thing, where she is
rightfully horrified at what she hears, still believing he’s a good man. There’s an interesting parallel between
Bernar’s fatalistic attraction to Amalia, where he seemingly can’t help himself
due to the force of her sexual allure, and the Vampire’s psycho-sexual urges
that he similarly can’t control, though one comes from the moral authority of
the police, while the other represents the basest criminal element that even
gives criminals a bad name. The build-up
of suspense eventually leads to the Vampire abducting Amalia’s daughter, where
it’s clear he has to fight with all his inner demons not to kill her while
taking her on a merry-go-round at a carnival.
When a blind balloon vendor recognizes the song he’s whistling, he
alerts an underground street network of the killer on the loose, where the
nocturnal landscape is bathed in shadows and police searchlights, capturing the
pent-up dread in claustrophobic close-ups, building the anxiety until Amalia
herself confronts the killer. Slithering
through yet another manhole cover, the Vampire releases the child but escapes
into the municipal sewer system where other beggars, derelicts and thieves
converge on him, cornering him in a shadowy underworld of nightmarish darkness
where he pleads for his life. The tense
and moody atmosphere is artfully crafted, creating energy and intensity
throughout, where the strong performances, especially Zubarry, Pinzón, and
Escalada make this a thoroughly enjoyable addition to Fritz Lang’s M (1931) experience.
