El húsar de la muerte

I saw 'Hussar of the Dead' at the 2006 Cinema Muto silent-film festival in Sacile, Italy, where it was definitely one of the high points of the excellent festival. This Chilean silent movie was at least the third film version (and the second by actor-director-author Pedro Sienna) depicting the life of Chilean hero Manuel Rodriguez, who fought for Chile's independence from Spain and was assassinated in 1818.

The print I viewed had some missing sequences, and new titles added to bridge the gaps. The original intertitles (in Spanish) appear directly on the film, superimposed (in white) over the actors. This device never works very well, because the portions of the letters appearing over a white image are illegible. I'm fluent in Spanish, yet I had trouble reading all the titles because of this device. At one point, a title flips over on its vertical axis to reveal a second title. I've seen this visual device (not really a very expensive one) in several Hollywood silents and a few British ones, but never before in any other nation's films.

Pedro Sienna cast himself in the title role of this movie, but that's no vanity casting. He gives a fine performance: lithe, virile, and reasonably handsome without the supernaturally good looks of a Tyrone Power. There's also an astonishingly good performance by an amateur child actor, Guillermo Barrientos, as a boy who hero-worships Rodriguez.

I know almost nothing about Chilean history, so I can't vouch for this film's accuracy. I was mildly annoyed that -- as depicted here -- Rodriguez seemingly possessed the supernatural ability always to pop up in just the right place at the right time, no matter how many guards he must get past. In this respect, he seemed more like the (fictional) Scarlet Pimpernel than an historical figure. But I laughed at a montage sequence -- an intentionally funny one -- in which a series of dissolves show Rodriguez in several different disguises.

The misleading title 'Hussar of the Dead' refers to the fact that Rodriguez had a price on his head and was technically a dead man walking, or rather riding. How come Hollywood hasn't made a movie about this man yet? If ever they do, bet on them to change all the facts. I'll rate this entertaining movie 8 out of 10, and I'd like to know just how accurate it truly is.