El jefe

This is a beautifully shot movie from Argentina about a small band of men engaged in small time, get-rich quick schemes, with a charismatic but shady leader. The film is stylish, with beautifully lit black and white cinematography, elegantly seedy costumes and a lush dark score by Lalo Schifrin (his first film score, with a moody sax performance by Gato Barbieri). The uniformly fine cast give tense, sexually-charged performances that keep the more melodramatic moments from bogging down. A really gem of a film.

Here we have a film about a gang of five larcenists and swindlers who carry off various enrichment schemes under the leadership of "El Jefe," The Chief. The film opens as they are all at the police station under arrest. They nudge each other as they await interrogation, secure in the knowledge that as soon as El Jefe arrives, he will get them all off somehow. Naturally this film could not have been made during the Peron years, but just 3 years after his fall, here it is. The script is by David Vinas, an leftist anti-Peronist novelist. At one point in the film a woman asks El Jefe how he is able to command the unquestioning allegiance of his gang. He replies: "I take care of them. I snap my fingers, and they are at my beck and call. You have to study them, know their likes & dislikes, their little quirks, their resentments, and what they hope for. I give to them, and they give to me. And they end up wanting just what I want." We do not learn much about Peronism from this film, but we learn a lot about how Peron's detractors regarded him.