The Hand in the Trap

La mano en la trampa

(Argentina, 1961, 91 mins, 35mm)

Producers: Néstor Gaffet, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson
Screenwriters: Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Beatriz Guido, Ricardo Muñoz Suay, Ricardo Luna
Cinematographer: Alberto Etchebehere
Editor: Jacinto Cascales
Cast: Francisco Rabal, Elsa Daniel, Leonardo Favio, María Rosa Gallo, Hilda Suárez
Music: Atilio Stampone

According to St. Augustine, he who puts his hand in the trap must carry the trap around with him forever, and Leopoldo Torre Nilsson’s film is an extraordinary meditation on that idea.

Home for the summer, Laura, played by Elsa Daniel, decides the time has come for her to unravel her family’s dark shameful secret—the supposed presence, shuttered away in the attic, of a retarded dwarf born of one of her late father’s amorous liaisons. Her partner in this endeavor is Miguel, a local stud with whom she’s been flirting for sometime. Together, the two discover that the path to solve the mystery lies in the person of Cristobal Achaval, the forty-ish, drag racing scion of the town’s richest family, who years before had jilted Laura’s Aunt Inés, now said to be living happily in Alcatraz, USA.

Widely considered to be Torre Nilsson’s masterpiece and winner of the International Critics Prize in Cannes in 1961, The Hand in the Trap is a perfect example of the director’s unique blend of critical social vision and baroque visual imagination.

Richard Peña

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