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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
If you are looking for a slick Sunday night movie, skip Dios y la patria immediately.
But if you have a weird obsession with dusty, forgotten early melodramas where people stare intensely into the distance, you might actually dig this old Argentine flick.
I found a shaky, scratched-up copy of this relic and my expectations were pretty much on the floor.
The plot is mostly about duty, country, and a whole lot of crying in the fields.
Nelo Cosimi, who also acts in this, has this incredibly intense glare.
Seriously, his eyes look like they are about to pop out of his head in every single close-up.
There is this one scene where Floren Delbene is trying to look heroic, but a stray dog just wanders into the background of the shot. 🐶
It completely ruins the dramatic tension but honestly, it is the best part of the first half.
The film print I watched was so damaged it literally looked like it was raining indoors the entire time.
It has that same chaotic, rough-around-the-edges energy you find in old silent films like The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, though this one takes itself way too seriously.
I kept waiting for Miguel Gómez Bao to do something interesting, but he mostly just stands around looking worried about his family.
His mustache deserves its own acting credit, though.
The music in the copy I saw was just some generic piano track looping over and over.
By minute forty, I wanted to throw my laptop out the window.
Still, there is a weird charm to how earnest the whole thing is.
The actors really believed they were making a masterpiece here, even if Estaban Berría looks slightly confused in half his scenes.
It is not a great movie, not even close, but it is a neat little time capsule of a bygone era.