It’s that damn movie. The one who bragged about the 1978 World Cup rather than winning the first World Cup for an Argentine national team. everyone’s partyfrom Sergio Renanis for various reasons one of the worst Argentine films of all time.
“World Cup, the unequaled sports tournament”, said the faded woman of the ’78 World Cup. Not the official song, that of Enio Morriconenice, but what it starts with “25 million Argentines will play in the World Cup”. Something of this is impregnated in the frames of everyone’s party.
The production idea must have been eminently commercial – taking advantage of the fury that the World Cup victory had aroused in the Argentine people – and is already entering the field of speculation as to whether it would go well with the current dictatorship. Because Jorge Rafael Videlathe de facto president who led the coup of March 24, 1976 and took power, appears at the beginning, right at the beginning of the film, and in the River stadium in the final against the Netherlands.
The film was not released close to the conquest of the World Cup, but it did so before a holiday: May 24, 1979. To give you an idea, in those years the “strongest” dates for release in Argentine cinemas were either Thursday of the Week Santa, or May 25th.
So he thought about it and saved it for that moment.
What is annoying is this everyone’s party, viewed at the time and now from a distance, admits to being perceived as a supportive and propaganda film for the military regime. Roberto Maidana, the Canale 13 journalist, with his usual verbosity, recounts the successes of the demonstration against “the skeptics”. “The World Cup for us was a challenge in which football had nothing to do. Yes malevolence and skepticism. And we responded with the work done and with the serene and generous attitude of a mature people, in long trousers”, says Maidana directly to the camera.
The optimistic vision, with colored sheets, that all Argentines had made of the World Cup against the “anti-Argentine campaign” abroad, tried to cover up the horror of the genocide that was taking place in the national territory.
Of course people took to the streets, it was a massive mobilization, which for the first time didn’t exclude anyone. The footballing spirit, the success, meant that obtaining the World Football Championship – the first of the two that the national team would have won – became a mass event the likes of which had not been recorded in Argentina since the concentration camps in Plaza de Mayo when Juan Domingo Perón came out on the balcony of the Casa Rosada to speak to his companions.
how was the movie
The passage of time has played worse for everyone’s party (You can see it, if you want, on YouTube). The film combined documentary images of the national team matches directed by César Luis Menotti with scenes from the “Fútbol ballet” (very popular at the time, which consisted of slowing down the images and taking them after some players) and apparently humorous moments in which there only comedians or comedians attended, but also actors who were renowned at the time and who would later become authentic stars of national cinema.
It had a script by Renán himself (who he had directed Trucefirst Argentine film nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film), Hugo Sofovich and Mario Sabato, son of Ernesto Sabato, referred to as Adrián Quiroga, a pseudonym he also used when directing two of the Super Agents films in the 70s and 80s.
The cast that Renán called leaves no room for oblivion. Many are no longer there, and many of them would like us not to remember that they were there: Luis Sandrini himself, Juan Carlos Calabró, Mario Sánchez, Ricardo Espalter, Luis Landriscina, Julio de Grazia, Ulises Dumont, Nélida Lobato, Malvina Pastorino , Gogó Andreu, Aldo Barbero, Elsa Berenguer, Rudy Chernicoff, Graciela Dufau, Susú Pecoraro, Silvina Rada, even Félix Luna lent themselves and Ricardo Darín appears on a piece of paper.
Nor can the sports journalists who pass through the screen be branded as collaborators of the dictatorial regime -some have since jumped the football fence-, such as Néstor Ibarra or Enrique Macaya Márquez. The story of José María Muñoz -defender of the dictatorship-, on the other hand, still makes the skin crawl or annoys. How more anger gives them.
The music was composed by Oscar Cardozo Ocampo, who had written the Rebellious Patagonia and also alternated in many films by Porcel and Olmedo.
What happens to Juan Carlos Calabró, with his character El Contra, who in the film turned pale every time he appeared and predicted that the fate of the national team would be disastrous, was a synthesis that mirrored the moment, surely accidental.
Because El Contra – the one who thinks differently – receives a popular beating. That it ended as it ends in the film is like an unequivocal and certainly unthinkable sample of the reality of ’78, the year in which, among other things, the national team beat the Netherlands 3-1 in the final with two goals from Mario Alberto Kempes and one by Daniel Bertoni.
Source: Clarin
