Puente Alsina (1935) review: Melodrama, mud, and great hats

If you have a soft spot for dusty, crackly 1930s melodramas where everyone emotes like their life depends on it, Puente Alsina is worth a look today. But if you hate scratchy audio and highly predictable class-struggle plots, you will probably turn this off in ten minutes. 🎞️

It is a classic setup. A rich girl gets tired of her boring, nerdy boyfriend and falls hard for a rugged construction worker employed by her own dad.

The actor playing the worker has this incredible, heavy-browed stare. It makes you think he is constantly trying to remember where he parked his truck. Or his horse.

Meanwhile, there is this crooked labor contractor who wander around trying to start a strike. He wears his hat tilted so low it is a miracle he does not trip over the wheelbarrows on set.

I love how José A. Ferreyra directs this. It has that raw, almost accidental feeling of early Argentine sound films where nobody is quite sure how loud to yell at the microphone.

There is a scene near the bridge where the wind is blowing so hard you can barely hear the actors talking about "the revolution" of the working class. It actually makes the whole thing feel more real, even if it was clearly just a technical mistake.

It reminds me a bit of the clunky, earnest drama in Sisters, where the family problems feel incredibly heavy but also slightly silly to watch now.

The nerdy boyfriend is honestly my favorite part. He wears these giant glasses and looks like he would dissolve if he touched a single piece of wet cement.

When the rich girl dumps him, he does this dramatic sigh that lasts about five seconds too long. I laughed out loud, not gonna lie.

Then we get the strike plot. The "agitator" guy is so obviously evil that you wonder why the workers doesn't just throw him into the river immediately.

He basically twirls an imaginary mustache in every single frame. It lacks the spooky, slow-burn tension of something like The Terror, but it has its own weird, theatrical charm.

Some of the outdoor shots of Buenos Aires in the thirties are beautiful, though. You get these wide, empty spaces that feel totally different from the crowded city it is today.

But then the movie cuts back to a stuffy living room and the momentum just dies. The pacing is totally uneven, but that is part of why I like it.

It is a messy slice of film history. It is short, weird, and has so much accordion music.

Didja notice?

• The dog in the background of the construction site that looks deeply confused by the camera crew.
• That one extra who is supposed to be working but is just holding a shovel and staring directly at the lens.
• The tango music that starts playing out of nowhere during a very serious family argument.
• The incredibly fake-looking brick wall that wobbles slightly when someone leans on it.