El Dia Que Me Quieras

Netflix is full of wonders. I have no idea why I added this film, a 1935 Argentine melodrama called El Dia Que Me Quieras, to my queue. It sat at the top of the queue, with a "Very Long Wait," for quite a while, finally wriggling free and into my DVD player. It's an interesting film, if not very good.

Directed by the American John Reinhardt, the film stars Carlos Gardel, who was a sensation in Argentina, and is given credit for introducing the tango craze to the U.S. He died in a plane crash shortly after making the film.

The story is rather simple and predictable. Gardel plays a singer. His father is a rich financier, but Gardel doesn't want to go into the business and refuses to marry as a business arrangement. He elopes with a dancer (Rosita Moreno) and the two live a hardscrabble life with a daughter. When Gardel needs cash because his wife is sick, his father refuses to see him, so he breaks into his office and steals the money. But the wife dies anyway.

Years later, Gardel, under another name, is a huge star. He travels with his now adult daughter (also played by Moreno) who is being courted by the son of a banker. The banker is against this, because he feels the girl is not in their class. Of course he doesn't know that Gardel is the son of the now deceased financier, who has left everything to him.

Every so often the action is peppered with songs, sung by Gardel. I couldn't help but thinking that he was the Argentine version of Ricky Ricardo. Though only 81 minutes, I found the pacing rather sluggish and the music not terribly interesting. The print is in very bad shape. Still, who knew there were Argentine films from the 1930s?