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Juan Sin Ropa is a 1919 Argentine silent film directed by Georges Benoît and starring Camila Quiroga, Héctor Quiroga, José de Ángel, Julio Escarsela and Alfredo Carrizo. It was the only film released by Quiroga-Benoît Film, a production company formed by Camila and Héctor Quiroga—a prestigious acting couple—along with French photographer Georges Benoît. The film premiered in Buenos Aires on 3 June 3 1919 at the Teatro Grand Splendid (today the bookshop El Ateneo) and the Palace Theatre, both of them owned by businessman Max Glücksmann. The film was also sold for its screening in other countries such as Chile, the United States, France and Spain, among others.

The film tells the story of Juan Ponce, a rural laborer who travels to the city and is employed in a meat-packing plant, where he later leads a strike that culminates in violent repression. As such, the film has been traditionally misidentified as a depiction of the Tragic Week (Spanish: Semana Trágica) of January 1919, a violent repression of workers' strikes in Buenos Aires during the presidency of Hipólito Yrigoyen that ended in the massacre of hundreds of people. However, film historian Héctor Kohen demonstrated in 1994 that Juan Sin Ropa was finished before the onset of the Tragic Week, so the film could not have been inspired by the events.

Retrospectively, Juan Sin Ropa has been considered a pioneer in the social problem film genre.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23275253

https://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/trab_eventos/ev.5973/ev.5973.pdf

Cast
Cast and roles adapted from Héctor Rodolfo Kohen's reseach published in the 7th issue of Argentine magazine Film, April–May 1994.


 * Camila Quiroga as Elena, daughter of Alvarado
 * Héctor Quiroga as Juan Ponce, symbol of work
 * Julio Escarsela as Aldunate, a rich landowner
 * José de Ángel as Alvarado, owner of the meat-packing plant
 * Alfredo Carrizo as El Clinudo, rebel worker
 * Carlos Bouhier as Oscar, brother of Elena
 * Santos Casabal as Benítez, friend of Oscar
 * Haydée Passera as Aldunate's young daughter
 * José Rubens as Don Pietro Bonomi, a chacra owner
 * María Rando as María, daughter of Bonomi
 * A. Cuartucci as El Tuerto, friend of El Clinudo

Style and themes
Through its title, the film is associated with the legend of Santos Vega, a mythical gaucho hero who is defeated by a diabolic being called Juan Sin Ropa in a payada song duel. While the original Juan Sin Ropa character "represents the onset of a modern Argentina in which the state's sovereignty over its territory spells the end of the gaucho's way of life", the Juan Sin Ropa film "shifts the signifier of modernity away from the mysterious supernatural character onto a gaucho protagonist who, unlike Santos Vega's passing into history, is able to successfully negotiate the transition from a traditional rural economy to the urban industrial economy." As noted by hispanist Matt Losada: The original story's social Darwinism—shared by [Leopoldo] Lugones, who considers the gaucho unfit for a modern rationalized economy and thus destined to be replaced by the criollo elite—is neutralized as Juan Sin Ropa's protagonist manages to refashion himself for success in the new capitalist economy. In my reading, this new lineage is less important as an attempt to redeem the already disappeared gaucho than as a transference oof his symbolic capital (as authentically Argentine) to the recently disembarked proletariat.

Background and production
Juan Sin Ropa was produced and released during the pinnacle of silent film production in Argentina, a "golden age" in which the country began to "lead in the production of Spanish-language silent films, with more than 100 feature films being made from 1915 to 1924, equal to the combined total of films made in Mexico and Spain." The film was the only production by Quiroga-Benoît Film, a production company formed by Camila and Héctor Quiroga—a prestigious acting couple—along with French photographer Georges Benoît. Quiroga-Benoît Film was the successor of Platense Film, a.

The shooting of Juan Sin Ropa took place in mid-1918, as evidenced by the sustained advertising of the film that Quiroga-Benoît Film published in the specialized magazine La Película starting at its 107th issue of 8 October and continuing during the rest of the year. Also within the magazine La Película, the section called "Argentine Cinematography" (Spanish: "Cinematografía Argentina") reported on the state of film's shooting in its 111st and 112nd issues, released on 7 October and 14 October, respectively. By December 1918, Juan Sin Ropa was finished and Héctor Quiroga promoted and sold the film in neighboring countries.

Release and reception
The private presentation of the film in Buenos Aires was originally set to take place on 2 January 1919, although it was later postponed to 8 January. However, the events of the Tragic Week forced to cancel the function.

The theatrical release poster of the film has been conserved and is at permanent exhibition of the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken, which carried out an extensive restoration in 2021. Considered a reflection that the film was "a very ambitious production", the poster is 3 times larger than a traditional one, measuring 140 cm high by 290 cm wide and being formed by 3 separated units.

For example, on 13 February 1919 La Película reported that the film had a private screening in Valparaíso, Chile, and in the following issue—published on 20 February—it reproduced a review of the film published in newspaper El Mercurio of that city.

In August 1919, following the film's release, Benoît announced his return to the United States, where he resumed his job as a cameraman in Hollywood.

Legacy
The only print of the film known to exist is in fragments and without intertitles, only lasting 27 minutes.

In 1959, influential film historian Domingo Di Núbila described it as the "first Argentine film that sided with the proletariat with total combativeness and that, in the world order, is much earlier than what can be called a social movement within cinema."

Writing in 2012, Fernando Martín Peña described Juan Sin Ropa as a "surprising film due to the modernity of its mise-en-scène, the expressive use of its close-ups and the dynamism of its editing, which anticipates later European avant-garde experiences, such as those of Abel Gance. The British historian Kevin Brownlow went so far as to affirm that the formal resolution of the strike sequence seems to him far superior to the similar scene that can be seen at the beginning of Intolerance.

https://museodelcineba.org/asi-restauramos-el-afiche-de-juan-sin-ropa/