Hardly a Criminal

A nice surprise. I found this movie on "You Tube" in a full version without interruptions and found it really engaging from beginning to end.

The other reviewer --the only one-- mentions that it was the last film Hugo Fregonese directed before leaving Argentina to work in Hollywood and although we must make a great deal of concessions for the 60 years gone by since it was made, this film holds very well the passing of time.

Of course there are a lot of things to be considered, starting with the script, quite basic for nowadays standards and following with censorship of the time, that didn't allow blood to be seen when somebody was shot, sex of any kind, not even the mention of it, de rigueur moral endings, etc.

The fascinating side of such an old movie is to see the fantastic changes in customs, living conditions, and life in general, since having been shot in real backgrounds, we get to see the real Buenos Aires of the time, its people, the vehicles of that year --1949-- all under a neo realistic Italian style cinema.

The look of this movie is practically that of a documentary, since they haven't done a single shot in studios, all the action has been photographed in actual private and public spaces, streets, countryside, etc. Black and white photography of course reinforces this feeling.

The acting is good, the dialogs brief and to the point, the direction assured and I didn't find any forced scenes, the film flows smoothly from beginning to end.

An outstanding difference it's noticed in the treatment of life in prison, since nowadays we take for granted the violence within those walls for the prisoners in general and especially for the newcomer..., in the prison of this movie the conduct of the prisoners when it comes to sex, is similar to the one we imagine for a closed order convent, where the interns float around soaked up in the smell of sanctity...

It seems the times were bound towards "Don't ask, don't tell" policies, in many aspects of life, all supervised by the catholic church of the time, heavily imbued in the society of that Buenos Aires and Argentina in general.

A touch of political propaganda is offered from the beginning, when they explain on a written paragraph that "this story happened some years ago, when conditions in jails were different from nowadays..."

But as a general entertainment this movie is surprisingly good.

This is the last movie made in Argentina by Argentine director Hugo Fregonese prior to his Hollywood and European career, started with One Way Street in 1950. Fregonese later made other movies in Argentina, some with American actors such as Savage Pampas in 1966, others with Argentine personnel like his last two films.

Apenas un Delincuente (Hardly a Criminal, 1949) is a good action movie with the look and feel of a film noir, no doubt influenced by American and French movies of the time. Good script, somewhat naive here and there. Good acting by Jorge Salcedo, a popular actor of the forties and fifties, and an excellent supporting cast. Production values are high, typical for the Argentine studio system. In particular, black and white cinematography by Roque Giaccovino is moody and suggestive, with an expressionist look in interiors. Fregonese's direction is steady and energetic, and this film can sustain the claim of being the best he ever directed, even in view of his later Hollywood work.

A curiosity: 26 minutes into the movie, in a casino scene, we can see actress Faith Domergue in an uncredited cameo. Fregonese had married Domergue in a previous visit to Hollywood in 1947.

Nostalgics will enjoy the views of various parts of Buenos Aires at a time where the city was not cluttered with high rises.

Jose Moran works in a bank and is also a gambler who is constantly getting into debt. A greedy, self-centred man,who is impatient with the rat race,he comes up with a scheme to 'steal' half a million pesos, knowing that to enjoy the money later he'll have to spend some time in goal first. However after meeting some 'anarchists' in prison things don't go according to plan. This 1949 Argentinian film was made by producer/director Hugo Fregonese just before he left Argentina to go and work in Hollywood,and is a reasonably engrossing psychological crime thriller in which the increasingly paranoid Moran even starts to believe his brother may be trying to rip him off. Although anarchists get a bad rap in this film, it's economic unfairness and the delusions of money which clearly seem the main problems in this film.

Jorge Salcedo earns 250 pesos a month, which is not enough for a man who wants te good things in life, and wants them now. His girl friend has just finished her law exams, and explains to him that the maximum imprisonment for embezzlement is six years. So he steals half a million pesos, and prepares ot sit out the six years. But his brother is fired and his mother has bills; and authorities want to recover the missing money; so too do criminals in prison with him.

It's like a feature-length CRIME DOES NOT PAY episode in Spanish. With Hugo Fregonese directing, this Argentine film is not more graphic, but it is more violent than an American feature film would be.... although the standards were about to shift in Hollywood, possibly impelled by movies like this one.