| El dependiente | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Leonardo Favio |
| Screenplay by |
|
| Based on | "El dependiente" by Jorge Zuhair Jury |
| Produced by | Leopoldo Torre Nilsson |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Aníbal Di Salvo |
| Edited by | Antonio Ripoll |
| Music by | Vico Berti |
Production company | Contracuadro |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
El dependiente (Spanish for "the shop assistant" but also "the dependent") is a 1969 Argentinedrama film directed byLeonardo Favio and starringGraciela Borges,Walter Vidarte,Fernando Iglesias andNora Cullen. It is based on theshort story of the same name by Jorge Zuhair Jury, Favio's brother and frequent collaborator, with whom he also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Roberto Irigoyen. Set in a small provincial town, the film tells the story of Mr. Fernández, a lonely shop assistant in ahardware store that falls in love with Miss Plasini, a mysterious and isolated woman who lives with her mother.[1] It is the last installment of an unofficial trilogy of films Favio made in the 1960s, afterCrónica de un niño solo (1965) andEl romance del Aniceto y la Francisca (1967), which have earned him recognition as one of the most importantauteurs ofArgentine cinema, despite not being so well known outside the country.[2] The film was produced byLeopoldo Torre Nilsson through his company Contracuadro,[1] and was shot in the spring of 1968 in the then small town of Derqui, in thePilar district of theprovince of Buenos Aires.[3][4]
Upon completion,El dependiente was screened in the main competition of the 1968San Sebastián Film Festival,[5] where it received theCine Nuevo (English: New Cinema) award and an honorable mention from the Federation of Cine Clubs of Spain, and theCartagena Film Festival, where it received the award for best film.[3] The film had its commercial release on 1 January 1969 at the Paramount and Libertador theaters inBuenos Aires.[6] Like Favio's previous films,El dependiente was well-received by critics but abox-office failure, which prompted the director to reinvent himself as a successfulpopular singer.[7] At the 1970Argentine Film Critics Awards, Vidarte received theSilver Condor Award for Best Actor and Cullen theSilver Condor Award for Best Supporting Actress.[1]
In 2000, it was selected as the 14thgreatest Argentine film of all time in a poll conducted by theMuseo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken.[8] In a new version of the survey organized in 2022 by the specialized magazinesLa vida util,Taipei andLa tierra quema, presented at theMar del Plata International Film Festival, the film reached the 4th position.[9] In 2022, a print of the film was declared of National Artistic Interest by the Argentine government, along with other Favio films that were part of the holdings of a company that went bankrupt that passed to the protection of the National Commission for Monuments, Places and Historical Property.[10]
Upon release,El dependiente was generally well-received by Argentine film critics. The reviewer for specialized film magazineHeraldo del Cinematografista highlighted the film's "stimulating critical vision of moral vulgarity and small-town lack of perspective."[1]Gente magazine described it as a "rare cinema (...), magical realism of a naive world with a brutally simple anecdote, but with an incredible audacity in the treatment of editing and direction of the actors."[11] For its part, the review of newspaperLa Prensa noted: "In this strange and fascinating film (...) Favio defines with much greater clarity than in his previous works the essential springs of his art (...) he manages to impose his poetic world with remarkable balance and ease (...) The film impresses above all by a certain poetics of immobility, the description of a strangely suspended and frozen way of life in which madness, the grotesque and the sinister burst into the scene."[11] In a less favorable review,Boom magazine stated that: "the characters are too far from reality, the lines too thick, too exaggerated, and grotesque to feel them as real."[1] In addition, the review ofPanorama magazine described the film as a simple imitation of Spanish "truculent" cinema, in the manner ofMarco Ferreri'sEl cochecito (1960).[6]
Despite the favorable critical reception,El dependiente was abox-office failure, as had happened with Favio's previous films.[7] This can be partly explained by the decision of the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía—established in 1957 after thecivic-military dictatorship that overthrew PresidentJuan Perón—to classifyEl dependiente as "category B" instead of "category A", a common practice by the agency to obstruct support for independent filmmakers in the 1960s.[7]
Media related toEl dependiente at Wikimedia Commons