|||||| The Planet of Great Moviez ||||||||: El Chacal de Nahueltoro (DVDrip

El Chacal de Nahueltoro is based on the true story of a crime that scandalized Chile in 1960. An illiterate peasant, Jose del Carmen Valenzuela, played by Nelson Villagra, murdered his companion Rosa and her five children. Jose was imprisoned, taught to read and write, and also given religious instruction whilst in jail, and then executed by firing squad.

The power of the film as a criticism of the government and social system in Chile comes not only from its content but also from its style. The two distinct styles—the first half a documentary-style dealing with events leading up to Jose's multiple crime, and the second half a more conventional narrative-fiction style that narrates the events after Jose's imprisonment.

Instead of the usual cinematic disclaimer that no character portrayed is real by design or accident, the boundaries between fiction and fact are deliberately confused by news-style footage of actors portraying real-life events. In the first half of the film we follow the investigations of an unidentified mustached reporter who tracks down the story. We hear Rosa's voice intoning the findings of the court in Jose's case, a news announcer sensationalizing the horrors of the case and Jose himself telling us of his experience in distant tones. The soundtrack of the first half is used as the record, rather than the images. The camera work of this section is uneven, jumpy, full of short cuts and hand-held camera work—documentary-style in fact. Jose's arrest is portrayed in a manner that is direct and physical. After Jose's imprisonment the style of the film changes and becomes more conventional—as Jose's character grows and develops so does the style of filming, becoming less intrusive. By the end of Jose's time in prison he can tell a story and compose a poem, and can write enough to sign his own death certificate. We see him become a part of civilized society before he is executed.

The contrast of style serves to emphasize the message. As the film slips into conventional cinematic story-telling mode, we become less aware of our role as observer and more involved in the story-as-fiction. We are then brutally reminded that what we are seeing actually happened—and shocked as we are once again confronted with violence, when Jose is executed.

Littin's point here is the ultimate irony that Jose was educated, taught the benefits of human civilization only in order to die. As he said, Chilean society humanizes in order to destroy.
The film was well received in Chile and was awarded the Chilean Critic's Prize of 1970. It also made Miguel Littin a star in the Latin American film world. Latin American critics said that it was not a great film, (Hablemos de Cine, Peru, March 1984) because the meshing of the two styles of narrative did not entirely work, but it is still considered one of Littin's better pieces of cinema, and stands as a powerful critique of a brutal and inhumane regime, and a valuable historical document of a rare period of liberalization in Latin American politics of this era.

In Spanish:

Basada en hechos reales, esta película es un recreación de un impactante crimen, hito de la crónica roja o policial de Chile de mediados de la década de 1960, cuando un campesino llamado José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres fue apresado por el asesinato múltiple de una mujer campesina y sus cinco hijos, en la localidad de Nahueltoro (Chillán). Por la brutalidad del crimen cometido fue apodado "El Chacal".

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

El Chacal de Nahueltoro (DVDrip - 1969)

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