Benito Pérez Galdós en el cine argentino: El abuelo salteño

Abstract

In 1954 the director Román Viñoly Barreto adapted the 1897 novel by the Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós, El abuelo, to the Argentine screen. In this film the Galdós text was 'Argentinized' through the iconic star actors, Enrique Muiño and Mecha Ortiz, and through the use of exteriors, language, customs, and folklore from the province of Salta. In general the film follows the plot of the novel, but the ruined aristocrat, the Count of Albrit of the original text, is turned into the gaucho landowner Don Rodrigo de Achával, and the melodramatic conclusion takes place during the Fiesta del Señor y la Virgen del Milagro in Salta. The spirit of the film is in keeping with the conciliatory Peronist ideology of the period