Los pulpos (1948)

Interesting facts

Los pulpos is a 1948 Argentine melodrama film directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen and starring Olga Zubarry and Roberto Escalada. It was produced by the studio Lumiton during the classical-industrial period of Argentine cinema. Based on Marcelo Peyret's 1924 novel of the same name, with adapted screenplay by César Tiempo, the film tells the story of a writer from Buenos Aires who falls in love with a young, provincial woman through correspondence and then enters into an unhealthy relationship with her when she moves to the city.

Production and style

Los pulpos (lit."The Octopuses" in English), subtitled on posters as Historia de un amor desesperado ("A Story of Desperate Love"), was the second release of 1948 by Lumiton, one of the leading film studios during the classical-industrial period of Argentine cinema.

The film is based on the Argentine novel Los pulpos (1924) by Marcelo Peyret, a writer of popular, inexpensive weekly publications in the 1920s who has since been largely forgotten, and who uses the metaphor of the "octopus" as an irrational force that traps and suffocates its victim. The adapted screenplay was written by Christensen's frequent collaborator, César Tiempo.

Los pulpos is considered one of the prime examples of the unique film noir style that emerged in Argentine cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, a style characterized by its fusion with the melodrama genre. Analyzing it alongside Los verdes paraísos (1947), Fernando Martín Peña wrote that "neither film features any crimes—not even misdemeanors—but their protagonists experience their eccentric adventures with the anxiety of someone caught up in a dense,…

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