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MUERTE EN LA CALLE by Hugo Fregonese Screened at the 20th FICM as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato

Laura García

Muerte en la Calle (1950, directed by Hugo Fregonese), the second screening in alliance with the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, was screened during the 20th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival as part of the Special Program: Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Muerte en la Calle follows Doctor Matson's escape to a Mexican town after stealing a bag of money. His journey will be accompanied by dangerous surprises and an inescapable end.

Present at the presentation were Ehsan Khoshbakht, one of the directors of this festival organized in Bologna, Italy, and Daniela Michel, founder and general director of FICM, who said that Il Cinema Ritrovato is "the best festival in the world."

Muerte en la Calle is one of the two films by Hugo Fregonese recorded in Mexico. “There were some that were about Mexico, but weren't filmed here for political reasons,” Ehsan Khoshbakht noted.

Fregonese's cinema was characterized by including films made in Hollywood, but which spoke of Mexico, based on the representation of saints and criminals, where the characters are always fleeing to places where they felt safe. There were no second chances and his endings were fatalistic.

“All the characters in Fregonese’s movies are looking for a place to take refuge, a place that will save them. The place that saves the characters is precisely Mexico, which is sometimes interesting because we see many Hollywood movies in which arriving in Mexico is a total horror. It’s different here, where Mexico is depicted as a very friendly place,” shared Khoshbakht.