This month of writing is dedicated to a few movies that continue to use retro aesthetics of past cinematic eras in order to tell new stories. After focusing on a number of filmmakers who use this approach earlier this year, I have found only more movies of this kind creeping out of the international woodwork. With confidence, we can say that retro-cinematic dreamscapes are indeed a sub-genre unto themselves. In 2007, Argentinian writer/director Esteban Sapir came out with La Antena, a mostly-silent film about corrupt state censorship and the hypnotic influence of multimedia technology, all of which is presented in a surreal world that relies on film noir tropes. The movie has similarities to other films both new and old, but all of which have an appreciation for well-defined cinematic spectacle. Sapir draws upon the work of masters like Fritz Lang and other Weimar Era films in order to flesh out themes of authoritarian oppression that are unfortunately perennial.
La Antena takes place in “a city without a voice”, as one of the intertitles describes. The silent cinema aesthetics give the impression that the story takes place in the 1920s, but the occupation of our protagonist--a television repairman--suggests otherwise. Either way, it always seems to be snowing, although it never accumulates. The repairman (Rafael Ferro, known as “The Inventor” in the credits) struggles to raise his daughter Ana (Sol Moreno) as a single father, especially after he is fired from his other job at a television studio. Ana, along with many inhabitants of the city, is fascinated by a vocalist known as The Voice (Florencia Raggi) who performs on TV. The Voice is charismatic and seductive, even though her face is a dark void. Ana befriends The Voice’s child Thomás (Jonathan Sandor), who has no eyes, but is able to speak like his mother. Eventually Mr TV (Alejandro Urdapilleta), the studio executive, sets out on an evil plot involving a mad scientist and patients being strapped to operating tables shaped like a swastika and a Star of David. The Inventor, reunited with his ex-wife, The Nurse (Julieta Cardinali), as well as Ana and Thomás, travel to the mountains in search of a massive radio antenna that can be used to defeat Mr TV and his henchmen. La Antena is a vivacious black and white movie that delivers a symbolic, bittersweet finale.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of La Antena is its refusal to pick an era. Why use silent era aesthetics if you are telling a story about the television age of the 1950s? The lead description on Letterboxd states the movie takes place in “a futuristic city”, although there are no obvious markers identifying that on the surface of the movie. What all of these anachronisms may be leading to is a general theme about the cascading effect of media technology on culture. Whether it be the nitrate films of the early twentieth century, or the TV party that dominated the latter half of that century, each generation has a form of media that it is preoccupied with and manipulated by. Released in 2007, parts of La Antena could be considered prophetic in regard to how contemporary social media resembles previous eras. This is primarily seen in how text is used within the imagery. The intertitles start off like those of the silent era, describing exposition or quotations from characters. It slowly begins to enter the frame from varying angles like cartoon bubbles, interacting with the performers. Soon enough Mr TV is punching words out of the frame to punctuate his ruthlessness. The rise of Instagram and TikTok have made text overlays on video a common, if not obligatory aspect of how we communicate now. Many of the text generators have the ability to work similarly to the text in La Antena. This ends up being much more of a commentary on how media of the 2020s resembles the 1920s, regardless of Sapir’s incidental usage in the movie. La Antena emphasizes the similarities and contrasts between written and spoken words and how they operate in our culture.
What makes La Antena such a rewarding watch are its purely visual aspects. A lot of this showcases technology, whether real or embellished. Throughout the movie we come across spirals which suggest the hypnotic power of new media instruments. They are everywhere from TV screens to baked cookie-like treats that look like a nod to Soylent Green (which I covered on this substack last year). In addition to a small TV monitor for a mouth, the mad scientist also has all of the obligatory sine wave generators, and other such vague laboratory technology. In other scenes we get characters with cardboard glasses on, the eyes drawn in--this is a reminder of the eclipse glasses so many of us wore earlier this year, which are an example of simple, straightforward, non-electronic technology. All of these things are mashed together in a surreal combination, with a generally Art Deco style reminiscent of the 1920s and 30s. The innovation on screen is matched with technical tricks of early cinema that seem to be aided by occasional digital effects. We get shadow play, silhouettes, kaleidoscopic effects, rear-screen projection and mountains of printed paper that look like they could have been shot on an animation stand. When it is revealed that Thomás has no eyes, the effect looks very digital, bringing to mind the contemporary approach to retro aesthetics used by Guy Maddin and Even Johnson in The Forbidden Room (2015).
Throughout La Antena, we can see Sapir’s influences on display. The style has many similarities to Maddin’s films--which I covered in depth earlier this year--but La Antena probably owes its greatest debt to Fritz Lang. Mr TV’s gangsters often look like the ones found in Spies (1928), riding around on motorcycles or creeping around in the shadows. The laboratory scenes are based on ones from Metropolis (1926). We are frequently given superimposed montages of many eyes, which resemble Lang’s compositions in Metropolis, and much later, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960). There are other filmmakers that Sapir references throughout the running time. One of the most beautiful shots shows us Ana jumping on her bed in slow motion, which is a clear nod to the famous scene in Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct (1933). Another character not mentioned yet is the son of Mr TV, played by Valeria Bertuccelli. With this casting, La Antena references the popular women-playing-boys sub-genre of silent cinema, which I covered last year in regard to the 1915 criminal mastermind picture Filibus. The character lends a visible queerness to a story that is otherwise told along binary lines.
Although it has similarities to Guy Maddin’s films and others like Nikolaidis’ Singapore Sling (1990), La Antena does not seem to be as influenced by Brechtian theater as those films. Sapir’s film does have very clear political implications though. I wish I knew more about Argentinian history of the twentieth century that would probably make the symbology of the film far clearer. Either way, the swastika and Star of David found in the laboratory show obvious references to World War II, Fascism, and genocide. This may be a reference to the German Expressionist stylistic influence on the movie, or it may be a more specific reference to Argentinian or South American involvement in Fascist dictatorships. Perhaps one of the more subtle influences on La Antena--whether conscious or not--is the work of American writer William S Burroughs. His work was largely about the word as virus, and social control through language. Speech has the ability to influence and galvanize, and the lack of it is one of the most crushing violations of human rights. This story of a city without a voice, and technology that strips people of words in order to consolidate them for profit, is the kind of thing we could liken to Burroughs’ fictional city Interzone. La Antena shows us that without words, there are only screams, which in their emotional power, may be able to make a statement in and of themselves.