Noted Argentine actor Federico Luppi dies at 83.

[sandensea]

Federico Luppi, a dignified Argentine actor well known for his complex performances died on Friday in Buenos Aires. He was 83.

The cause was complications of a subdural hematoma that developed after a fall at his home in April, said his wife, the actress Susana Hornos.

Luppi’s career, which began in the mid-1960s, included dozens of film and television roles, often in Argentine productions. Slim and stately with a shock of white hair, he endowed his characters with a sense of gravity.

Born in Ramallo, northwest of Buenos Aires, in 1934 to poor Italian immigrants, he studied architecture and worked in a slaughterhouse and a bank before he was able to support himself as an actor.

He was blacklisted from Argentine productions for some years after he was openly critical of the 1976-81 dictatorship of Gen. Jorge Videla.

He was also beset by a rocky personal life, including an acrimonious divorce to co-star Haydée Padilla in 1987, and a child support dispute over an illegitimate son born in Uruguay in 1999. Argentina's collapse in 2001 forced Luppi to emigrate to Spain; he returned in 2008.

Despite those difficulties, he remained a prolific actor, active in theater, television and film.

Luppi is best remembered in Argentina for two thrillers by the Argentine director Adolfo Aristarain: as a demolitions expert who stages an accident in order to expose an unscrupulous mining firm in “Time for Revenge” (1981); and as a contract killer who has tables turned on him in “Last Days of the Victim” (1982).

He also won acclaim for his role as a naive small-businessman in the tragedy “Sweet Money” (1982); as a political idealist who organized rural shepherds in “A Place in the World” (1992); and as a dying literature professor who tries to start a new life in “Common Ground” (2002).

Luppi later starred in three films by famed Mexican director Guillermo del Toro: as an antiques dealer turned into a vampire in “Cronos” (1993); as a leftist sympathizer who ran a haunted orphanage in Franco’s Spain in “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001); and the monarch of a fairy kingdom in “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), which won three Academy Awards in 2007.

Writing in Spanish on Twitter, del Toro called him “our Olivier, our Day Lewis, our genius, my dear friend.”

At: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/obituaries/federico-luppi-83-actor-known-for-del-toro-films-dies.html

“When you've learned everything, then you die.” Federico Luppi, 1934-2017.

[Judi Lynn]

1. What an actor! I looked for images of him and saw him in so very many roles.

It's completely easy to see why he is considered someone as accomplished as Sir Laurence Olivier.

He did have a presence which is easy to spot as powerful, commanding.

I saw this photo from one of his movies, and recognized his co-star immediately!



Saw her in the unforgettable Official Story.

What an outstanding quote from Federico Luppi! It will be hard to forget after hearing it once!

[sandensea]

2. He had a dramatic life - on and off the screen.

Luppi struggled with anger management issues - particularly in his relationships. But judging from his happy marriage in his sunset years to Spanish actress Susana Hornos (his widow), he may have finally learned to tame the inner beast as it were. We are indeed here to learn.

In any case, there's no doubt his on-screen persona struck a nerve among Argentine audiences probably like no other actor. He really was an 'everyman' who could appeal to both middle- and working-class audiences, and left-wingers and right-wingers alike - indeed a rare feat in Argentina.

Here's the final scene in one of his best-known roles: as a well-meaning but naive small businessman lured into becoming a front for one of the numerous money laundries that sprung up after the dictatorship deregulated banking in 1977.

The film is loosely based on the infamous BIR case, which left thousands of depositors lured by high interest rates (à la S&L) in the lurch when it collapsed in March 1980. The BIR insolvency triggered a run on numerous other banks, and a domino effect leading the entire banking system - and economy - to collapse in 1981.

The BIR's chairman, José Trozzo (one of whose partners was Admiral Emilio Massera, the second-ranking figure in the military junta during its first three years), fled to Mexico, leaving the bank's director holding the bag.

In this scene, Luppi's character finally realizes he's been had:

[Judi Lynn]

3. Plata Dulce 10 looks interesting and valuable as a historical view.

If only the people born after the dictatorship have sources who have informed them of what the fascists did to the whole country. It would seem that anyone who lived through it the first time would have spotted all the earmarks when the new one started.

It does take a special person to be able to hold the interests of people of all persuasions, doesn't it? That's a rare skill, very few people can claim it.

Thanks for posting the excerpt from the film. It stands as a great recommendation for seeing it in entirety.

Very refreshing seeing a character actually struggling to cope with horrendous circumstances rather than resorting to violence, hopping in his car, doing car chases, and getting into shootouts at the end, isn't it? Maybe just a little more evolved as a way to approach living.

[sandensea]

4. Glad you liked it, Judi.

Here's Plata Dulce ('Sweet Money') in its entirety if you have 90 minutes to spare.

It starts from the euphoria and optimism that prevailed just after the June 1978 World Cup victory, and takes the hapless Bonfattis through the sudden "sweet money" bubble until its inevitable crash in '81 (history repeating itself?).

Just make sure your YouTube setting is on autoplay, as the upload's divided into 10 scenes. Enjoy!

[Judi Lynn]

5. Plata Dulce is terrific. Just finished seeing it, am very glad to have had the chance.

Federico Luppi was an excellent actor, for certain.

It is a little painful to see someone get burned like that, isn't it? No doubt there was a horrendous toll taken on the entire country if things came apart quickly the first time.

I thought it was interesting when Luppi's character went to the very big meeting, as he entered the room, the camera fixed on the back of someone who looked exactly like Carlos Saul Menem. It was a startling resemblance.

Looking for something more on Carlos Menem, I found this article:

Disasters of Neoliberalism

Argentina in flames

by Salomon Partnoy

CovertAction Quarterly, Spring 2002

. . .

A report from the Central Bank of Argentina confirmed the fact that in the month of November 2001, $4.9 billion were withdrawn from the nation's banks. Those rich depositors who had more than $250,000 in the bank withdrew 47.4% of their money, whereas the small depositors who had up to $10,000 were allowed to withdraw only 9% of their funds.

The withholding of bank deposits, that is, prohibiting people from withdrawing their `` savings-called "corralito"-a creation of ' the Minister of the Economy, Domingo Cavallo, was a measure taken on December 1, 2001, in the face of the massive withdrawal of money by the biggest depositors. Most of the money belonging to small depositors still remains inaccessible to them.

The most recent data from the Central Bank reveal that 98% of all depositors had their deposits blocked, that is, those with $50,000 or less in their accounts, whereas this restriction only affected 0.21% of the major accounts of more than $250,000. As a result of emptying the banks of these huge deposits and referring to this "blocking" invention of Cavallo, President Duhalde said: "the corralito is like a bomb, if it explodes no one is left with a single peso." In other words, a situation in which anyone who has a bank account loses everything.

The main standard-bearers of this neoliberal system in Latin America were Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico, Carlos Saul Menem in Argentina, Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela and Alberto Fujimori in Peru. Each of these cases resulted in such financial disasters for their societies that three of these leaders were arrested-Menem, Perez and Pinochet-and two of them fled into exile-de Gortari and Fujimori. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were the commanders who are still unpunished.

In Argentina, the program of privatization was initiated by President Menem in 1989. This strategy, based upon a macroeconomic theory, has as its goal the corporate takeover of the finances of the State, both its public spending potential and its operating budget. While market theory talks about "greater efficiency" and "social benefits," its real goal is the deregulation of the national economy. It accomplishes this by demanding the privatization of the country's major industries, thus reducing the State's income and then having foreign companies take over-privatize-the principal industries which control the primary services of the society: gas, electricity, telecommunications, water and sanitary services.

In Argentina, this neoliberal economic model took off in 1990, focusing on the laws related to the de-monopolization of public services by the State: state reform, monetary regulation and the law of convertibility, by which the Argentine peso abandoned the gold standard and made the U.S. dollar its base. The primary objective of Domingo Cavallo, then Minister of the Economy, was to undermine the nation's sovereignty, by integrating Argentina's economy into that of the United States. The Minister of Foreign Relations for Argentina, Guido Di Tella, defined these bilateral ties with the US as "carnal relationships."

As a result, Argentina's national sovereignty-its political autonomy and its economic independence-was subjugated to the global capitalist system. The Argentine social security system was privatized through establishing agreements for depositing the funds with, and transferring the administration to, foreign financial corporations.

The income received from the sale of the State's patrimony over its national industries was either insignificant or wasted without the government revealing any clarifying accounting data, so the public believed the transfer had been a good deal for Argentina. To the contrary, as if by magic, the nation's entire inheritance, accumulated over generations through the labor of its people, disappeared overnight. The system of public administration was dominated by corruption, based upon a system of artificial justice and weakened by excessive expenditures manipulated by the presidency behind a veil of traitorous silence that will take future historians years to investigate and uncover.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Disasters_Neolib_Argen.html

Thanks for locating and sharing the entire Plata Dulce film, sandensea. It had a lot of presence, and impact.