With film month in full swing here at The Indy, we took to the streets and researched the Top 5 historic cinemas in Buenos Aires. We looked for the hidden gems the city has to offer: cinemas with a history, architecturally fascinating spaces, and the cinemas currently offering a unique film-going experience.

Maybe you’ve passed these buildings whilst rushing around the city, and wondered of the history that lies behind them, or are looking to explore some less obvious architectural and cinematic delights. We have compiled a list of interesting cinematic spaces, from the retro haven that is Cine Lorca and the hub of Argentine cinema over at the Gaumont, to the lesser-known past of the famous El Ateneo bookshop. Here are our favourites:

Photo: Simon Guerra

Cine 25 de Mayo

Cine 25 de Mayo started life in the minds of a group of entrepreneurs in the city’s Villa Urquiza district in the 1920s. The group dreamed of bringing the beauty of film to their barrio, in a golden era of Hollywood and cinema across the globe. In less than a year, in 1927, the doors to the grand Cine 25 de Mayo opened.

The ornate façade was the vision of architect Miximo Gasparutti, while artist Felipe Galante designed the sumptuous interior, both of whom were residents of the barrio at the time. The cinema became the pride of the neighborhood, and went on to act as one of the most famous musical theatre locations of the early 20th century.

Nicknamed El Coloncito or El Petit Colón, due to the cinema’s resemblance to Buenos Aires’ iconic Teatro Colón, the main hall once held an astounding 1,500 cinema goers across three balcony floors. During its golden period, it featured exquisitely detailed ionic columns, domes painted with scenes from theatre performances, and imposing stained-glass windows.

The winter of 1982 saw the closure of the cinema, followed by years of silence, neglect, and unsuccessful attempts to have the building listed. The rebirth of the cultural site came when the mayor of Buenos Aires, Aníbal Ibarra, together with Culture Secretary Gustavo López, signed a document agreeing to purchase the building. This agreement promised the restoration, reopening, and reintroduction of the cinema into the cultural life of the city.

Now called Complejo Cultural 25 de Mayo, the spot plays hosts to a variety of performances and activities, from a milonga for tango and concerts, to theatre performances and film screenings. Details of their current schedule can be found on their website here.

Cine 25 de Mayo can be found on Avenida Triunvirato 4440 in Villa Urquiza.

Photo: Simon Guerra

El Ateneo

You have probably paid a visit to this Buenos Aires institution at some point during your time here, or at least heard countless recommendations to visit the opulent and elegant building. Now functioning as a bookshop, and frequently hailed as one of the finest in the world, El Ateneo is the former cinema and theatre that this list wouldn’t be complete without. It’s beautiful on the outside, of course, but the real architectural and historical delights can be found inside its walls.

The building opened as Teatro Gran Splendid in 1919 after architects Peró and Torres Armengol were commissioned for the project by film and music pioneer Max Glucksmann. The theatre hosted tango performances from the likes of Carlos Gardel, Francisco Canaro, and Ignacion Corsini, as well as housing radio station ‘Radio Splendid’ on the upper floors.

After only seven years, and with Glucksmann’s growing interest in cinema, he converted the theatre into the city’s most luxurious film house. Initially screening silent films accompanied by vast orchestras, the cinema later screened the first moving picture with sound in Buenos Aires – the love story ‘La Divina Dama’, or The Divine Lady. The cinema’s reign as the best picture house in the city – frequented by high society and only the most fashionable of porteños – came to an end in 1973. A brief three-year conversion into a theatre was followed by 18 further years of the Cine El Ateneo. The final film to be screened was the modern classic American Beauty in 1991, before the reels stopped turning for good and El Ateneo became the famous bookshop we know today.

Though extensive restorations worth $3million were undertaken before the reopening as a bookshop, many of the original features remain intact. The amphitheater’s seating area of over 1,000 people now holds around 120,000 books, whilst the theatre boxes remain as they were, although now featuring comfy seating for visitors to try before they buy. Original architecture is not missing either, with ceilings painted by Italian artist Nazareno Orlandi, and caryatid female figures sculpted by Troiano Troiani.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid is located on Avenida Santa Fe 1860 in Recoleta.

Photo: Simon Guerra

Cine Gaumont

Next up is the Art Nouveau-style Cine Gaumont, named after the French inventor and cinema pioneer Leon Gaumont. Flanked on either side by nondescript apartment buildings, this cine is very much a hidden gem in the Congreso neighbourhood. The façade featuring vertical white stripes against a wall of brick, topped by the cinema’s name in giant illuminated letters, certainly makes for a unique looking cinema.

Gaumont was founded in 1912 but moved to its current location 1946 and is a prime example of the rationalism style of architecture. Gaumont was, and remains to this day, one of the prime spots to watch Argentine film, but faced an uphill battle when competing with city’s increasingly popular multiplexes. It was remodelled in 1995 to increase capacity and split into three smaller rooms – a practice followed by most of the old cinemas in Buenos Aires as film-viewing trends changed.

The National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) rented the space and Cine Gaumont became INCAA Km 0, the first step in the project to create a network of screening rooms and national cinemas across the country. April 2012 saw an uncertain period for the historic Gaumont after the building owners refused to renew the lease to INCAA, which would expire the following year, and planned to demolish the building in order to make space for a planned real-estate development.

Within days, Buenos Aires legislature Juan Cabandié presented a project to protect Cine Gaumont; a project supported by top Argentine actors Graciela Borges, Luis Puenzo, and Pablo Echarri. On 6th July of that year the legislature of Buenos Aires passed the law granting the building structural protection, which paved the way for the official purchase of the cinema by INCAA, and the ongoing screening of Argentine cinema and culture.

Cine Gaumont can be found in Plaza del Congreso, Av. Rivadavia 1635. More information can be found here.

Cine Lorca

Cine Lorca is a classic art cinema, and makes the list for its retro details and mix of blockbuster, foreign and Argentine films; its a true rarity to find all screened under the same roof. Some might say this place out-dated and shabby, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say charming and retro, with an enchanting history.

Photo: Simon Guerra

Inaugurated in 1968 under the name of Cine Lion (a big name for a two-room building), the space was previously occupied by Cine Éclair, a staple of the early 1970s film circuit of the Av Corrientes stretch between Callao and 9 de Julio, of which Cine Lorca is one of the few remaining spots. The likes of el Lorange, el Lorraine, el Losuar y el Loire have since vanished, leaving Lorca as something of a looking-glass into the fascinating past of this section of the city.

The façade is of glazed black mirror with an illuminating sign that has been there since the opening of the cinema. The interior includes two rooms, one upstairs one downstairs, with old-school seats, plenty of wood panelling, and other retro details that add to the experience.

Now screening a mix of films, heavily weighted in favour of mainstream and new releases, the films on show juxtapose the old-fashioned surroundings to create a unique film-viewing experience.

Cine Lorca is located in the heart of the city’s theatre district over at Av Corrientes 1428. Film listings and times can be found here.

Cine York

Cine York (Photo: Jorge Macri)

And finally we have Cine York, all pink-hued and sparkly-lit, a gem that you’ll have to venture outside of the city a little to enjoy.

Located in Olivos, around a 30-minute ride away, the cinema, set amongst tree-lined and cobbled streets, was founded in 1904 after an initiative by a group of Olivos residents to set up the cinema in a house for a monthly rent of $50. Two lots of land were subsequently purchased at auction by the cinema treasurer, and after some years of construction, the Cine Teatro York was opened on 2nd February 1910. (For a glimpse into what the cinema looked like for some of its first visitors, click here). The big break for the cinema came when Bartolomé Repetto donated a state of the art Gaumont cinematic projector. The space also soon became a go-to location for dances, theatrical performances, and social gatherings. The cinema dipped in and out of screening films throughout the years, but the owners remained adamant in keeping it open for public use, meaning schools and public entities always had access to the space and its services.

Re-inaugurated in 2000 with the latest cinematic technology, Cine York now screens art-house and commercial films from Tuesday to Sunday. Additionally, they host various plays, ballet performances, folk recitals, tango shows, workshops, seminars, and tours.

Cine York can be found on Juan Bautista Alberdi 895 in Olivos. More information on their Facebook page.

As the 14th international BAFICI film festival gets underway and the city is awash with cinephiles, we thought we’d give you a run down of great Argentine directors so that you can hold your own this week when chatting to the moustache-twiddling, beret-sporting, Deleuze loving (that one’s for the real pros) film enthusiasts.

Far from a comprehensive list, our Top 5 Argentine Directors sets out to tell you five directors you should know about, and should give you plenty to chew on while BAFICI is underway.

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (1924-78)

The grandfather of Argentine film, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson helped bring prestige to Argentine cinema and was the most important figure in inspiring the younger generation of film-makers who started the new-wave in Argentine cinema at the beginning of the 1960s. According to international filmmaker Roman Polanski, he helped bring Argentine cinema up to international quality without ignoring subjects that were integral to Argentina.

Obsessed with the decline of the bourgeois society in his country, his films were often filled with sexual and societal frustration and peopled with dark characters with shadowy pasts who move in decadent environments. He directed. with humour and finesse.

Born in Buenos Aires, the son of the pioneering Argentine director, Leopoldo Torres Ríos, Leopoldo spent his formative years working under with his father and lost in the books of Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust and James Joyce. His mother was an Argentine of Swedish descent and he cited her compatriot, the director Ingmar Bergman, as one of his greatest influences. He lived young and directed fast, making 30 features in little over 25 years.

His most fruitful collaboration was with his wife, the writer Beatriz Guido. Together, they adapted her novels ‘La mano en la trampa’ and ‘La casa del ángel’ into screenplays that became two of his most successful and critically acclaimed films. When the latter came out, French filmmaker and critic Éric Rohmer called it “the best film to have arrived from South America since the beginnings of cinema.”

No stranger to Argentine literature, Torre Nilsson was a friend of the author Ernesto Sabato and also known for directing screenplays based on the work of other Argentine writers including Roberto Arlt, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, and gauchesque poet, José Hernández.

For more information find Leopoldo Torre Nilsson on IMDB or visit his website

Leonardo Favio

Leonardo Favio (born 1938) 

Born Fuad Jorge Jury, Leonardo Favio lived through a tough childhood in a small town in the north of Mendoza. An Argentine of Syrian descent, he is a true artistic polymath who built a career out of directing, writing, composing, singing and acting. Much lauded in his home continent, many believe he never got the recognition he deserved on the international scene.

Working under the tutelage of Argentine director Torre Nilsson, he was invited to act in films at the end of the 1950s, and the beginning of his career as a director followed shortly after with the production of his first short film in 1960. Four years later, his debut feature ‘Crónica de un niño solo’ cemented his place at the forefront of Argentine cinema.

The influence of filmmakers like the Spanish born Luis Buñuel and founder of French new-wave cinema François Truffaut was evident, although his personal style and strong aesthetics also shone through. He turned the focus away from a popular fixation with the urban bourgeoisie, towards the tough life at the fringes of society. For this reason he is credited with helping to break the barrier between popular culture and high art.

His films, despite shirking away from the mainstream and embracing the experimental, enjoyed a mass appeal in Argentina. Another of his most acclaimed films, ‘El romance del Aniceta y la Francisca’, is considered by many to be one of Argentina’s best.

An element in his life that cannot be ignored is his vehement support of Peronism. In 1999 he released an exhaustive 340-minute documentary about his political idol: ex-president and controversial figure Juan Domingo Perón.

In 2010, he was appointed Argentina’s Cultural Ambassador by fellow Peronist and current president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

For more information find Leonardo Favio on IMDB

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas (born 1936)

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas was born in Buenos Aires province and has made his name as one of the most important Argentine directors and documentary-makers.

Unlike Favio, Solanas has gained a global recognition, winning the Golden Bear at Germany’s Berlinale, the Special Jury prize at the Venice film festival and the Best Director award at Cannes.

Solanas’ work comes inextricably linked with politics. Any discussion on the director must surely go hand-in-hand with the mention of ‘Grupo Cine Liberación’ – a cinematic movement with which he was strongly affiliated. In the 1960s and 70s, the movement offered a reaction to Latin American politics and global cinema, focusing on making films that were socially and politically committed rather than purely entertainment driven. With their militant cinema they tried to demonstrate that Argentina was a society in crisis.

Their trademark was to make films anonymously, a move that encouraged collective creative processes and also protected them from political repression at a time when dictatorships were starting to emerge across the continent. Their most acclaimed film from the period was a four-hour documentary titled ‘La hora de los hornos: Notas y testimonios sobre el neocolonialismo, la violencia y la liberación’. The film became a symbol of activist cinema during the zenith of leftist politics.

For more information find Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas on IMDB or visit his website

Armando Bó

Armando Bó (1914-81)

The inclusion of director Armando Bó in this list might raise a few eyebrows, but his influence and cult following should not be underestimated.

US filmmaker John Waters once said that when he was searching for inspiration he would look to the Argentine director’s films and wish he spoke Spanish. And well, that’s about as apt an introduction as the director could hope for. He described ‘Fuego’ (Bó’s best-known film) as “a huge influence”, admitting “I forgot how much I stole”.

In a time when sexploitation films were taken more seriously and the line between art-house and soft-core was slightly blurrier, Armando Bó was king. This auteur of sorts made 30 films between 1954 and 1980 – none of which were too subtle or nuanced. He hacked his way through plots, played for slapstick laughs and flashed a lot of flesh but the audience loved it and kept coming back for more.

He made 27 films starring the now retired model and actress Isabel Sarli. Sarli was Miss Argentina 1955, the Brigitte Bardot of Latin America and the filmmaker’s real-life lover.

“You inspired us all to a life of cheap exhibitionism, exaggerated sexual desires and a love for all that is trash-ridden in cinema,” Waters once said of Sarli, but it’s a comment that works just fine for Bó too.

For more information find Armando Bó on IMDB 

Juan José Campanella

Juan José Campanella (born 1959)

Probably the most recognisable name on this list for a contemporary audience, Juan José Campanella is a member of the exclusive two-man club of Oscar-winning Argentine directors. He has spent much of his working life in the United States and has directed several English language films as well as a number of North American television series.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, he began studying engineering at university but famously dropped out with only a year to go to pursue a career in filmmaking.

He is credited with helping to restore pride in the Argentine film industry which has historically suffered from “chronic self-depreciation”. “In Argentina, a Hollywood movie is innocent until proven guilty. An Argentine movie is the other way around. I have to work really hard to break down that barrier,” he told one US publication in an interview.

Having been previously nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for his film ‘El hijo de la novia’ (‘The son of the bride’), Campanella’s talents as a director were finally recognised in 2010 when his film ‘El secreto de sus ojos’ (‘The secret in their eyes’) was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

A classy, unpredictable film noir set in 1975 Buenos Aires – it brought the spotlight back on Argentine cinema and helped make him the most bankable homegrown director in Argentine history.

He is currently working on an animated feature called ‘Metegol’ (‘Foosball’) and, the way things are going, it probably won’t be the last time we see him fumbling at his collar nervously at another red carpet event.

For more information find Juan J. Campanella on IMDB

If you were to write an ABC of Argentine literature, you’d expect to find three of the hardest-hitting household names. The Indy continues the Beyond Borges series with the author whose name would surely be the first on most people’s lips.

Nowadays best-known for his novels ‘El juguete rabioso’, ‘Los siete locos’ and ‘Los Lanzallamas’, Roberto Arlt was a novelist, short story author, journalist and playwright who, despite entering literature as something of an underdog, emerged as the first ‘modern’ novelist in Argentina and a source of inspiration to a generation of writers that followed.

An artists impression of Roberto Arlt (Courtesy of the artist Ricardo Ajler)

A Treasured Columnist

The son of immigrant parents, Arlt was born in Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century and raised in the Buenos Aires’ neighbourhood of Flores. He spoke openly about the difficulties of his upbringing and of the abusive and tyrannical nature of his father, a Prussian glassblower and postcard artist.

Having been expelled from school between the ages of eight and ten, he received minimal formal education from then on, choosing instead to spend his time on the streets of the city that inspired him, or reading the work of the Russian greats Gorky, Dolstoy and Dostoevsky.

His first short story, ‘Jehovah’, was reportedly published before he left home in 1916, but before pursuing writing as his profession. Arlt attended the a naval school of mechanics, and also served in the armed forces, undertaking various forms of employment as a mechanic, a painter, a dockworker, an apprentice to a tinsmith and a brick factory manager, before entering journalism.

Like many Argentine authors before him, he viewed journalism as a means of financially supporting his creative writing, but also as a step up to the arena he wished to enter.

Many years later, he published a column entitled ‘Yo no tengo la culpa’, whereby he spoke of the difficulties he encountered breaking into the country’s literary circles as an immigrant with an expressionless family name of no social standing.

But writing as a columnist proved to be an important aspect of Arlt’s career and an important form of expression for Arlt, who originally wrote part of his first novel, ‘El juguete rabioso’, as a column.

Published in a variety of newspapers including Critica, Don Goyo, and much later in El Mundo, Arlt’s columns, known as ‘Aguafuertes’, were the most popular of his literary offerings during his lifetime and brought him nation-wide recognition as a writer.

The ‘Aguafuertes’ written between 1928 and 1935 for the newspaper El Mundo, are favourably remembered for commenting on the peculiarities and the hypocrisy of life in Buenos Aires at the time. Retrospectively compiled and republished in a book that itself became a classic, they are often reprinted and remain treasured works of national literature.

Writing From Buenos Aires’ Underbelly

In the same year that his friend and contemporary Ricardo Güiraldes published his nostalgic novel ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, Arlt published his first novel ‘El juguete rabioso’ in 1926.

The novel, which narrates the adventures of a character called Silvio in his efforts to become someone, was originally drafted as ‘La vida puerca’ until Güiraldes prompted a rethink by suggesting that Argentine readers were perhaps not yet ready for such a crude title.

Roberto Arlt (Photo: Veronique Pestoni)

Featuring unlikely characters alienated by environments found to be rife with inequality and oppression, his fiction presented a so far unexplored perspective and found a huge audience among the youth.

Reflecting the hardships, as well as the energy and chaos of the time, the novel adopted a darkness of style that hadn’t been seen before, and expressed anguish and scenes of violence in a language that was described as at once “rough” yet the “most alive”.

His 1929 novel, ‘Los siete locos’, and its sequel ‘Los lanzallamas’, which followed in 1931, are collectively considered his masterpiece. Together with ‘El juguete rabioso’ they are occasionally considered a trilogy and whilst it’s true that they each played a part in revealing Buenos Aires’ hidden underbelly, it was ‘Los siete locos’ that earned Arlt the nickname ‘The Porteño Dostoyevsky’, after the Russian existentialist author.

The innovation of Arlt’s work lay not only in his style, but also in his decision to feature the poor, the criminal and the mad as his protagonists – predating the likes of William Burroughs and Irvine Welsh, who have since created equally shocking literature by adopting similar subjects.

Intended to be experimental and impressionistic, his novels introduced a fragmented and confused chronology, adding to the warped atmosphere and sense of chaos present in the storylines.

At once a heady mix of lower and middle-class Spanish, scientific vocabulary, vulgarities and foreign words blended with the dialects of porteños and thieves, Arlt was condemned by some for poor grammar and bad craftsmanship. At the same time, his coarse yet imaginative use of language was commended by others.

In saturating his work with a language that was as grossly urban as his themes, Arlt wrote with deliberate disregard for the rules knowingly observed by other authors. But whilst his unpolished colloquial writing came under fire from some, it was undoubtedly a refreshing move away from the middle-class literature exemplified by the Argentine writers of the same time.

Citing the changing of ideas as a reason to reject literary tradition, he made little effort to ‘linger over embroidery’, presenting a case for language being something that is constantly evolving, as though it were living.

It was this attitude that gained him the respect of a new generation of writers, who saw him as a proponent of anti-establishment anti-literary writing.

Julio Cortázar, author of the Argentine ‘anti-novel’ and the big name to have emerged from the Latin American literature boom of the 1960s regarded Arlt as a master, whilst award-winning writer Ricardo Piglia and ‘mass novelist’ César Aira have also cited him as particularly influential.

A recent stage production of Trescientos Millones (Photo: Estefanía Zinboer)

A Theatrical Legacy

With the exception of a fourth novel, ‘El amor brujo’, and two short story collections, Arlt moved his writing almost exclusively into a new medium from 1930 onwards.

Of his ten plays, only  ‘El fabricante de fantasias’ was released in a commercial theatre, with the remaining nine premiering at independent venues such as Teatro del Pueblo.

‘Trescientos millones’ in 1932, ‘Saverio el cruel’ in 1936 and ‘La isla desierta’ in 1937, make up a trio of plays generally considered the most representative of his theatrical writing.

Commended for the construction of dreamlike sequences and the imagination of nightmarish characters in plays that were fuelled by a social conscience, Arlt is considered a forerunner to the trend of social theatre and the currents of absurdism and existentialism that followed.

The third in our ‘Beyond Borges‘ series, the poet, playwright and novelist José Mármol follows hot on the heels of August’s Esteban Echeverría and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, completing a trio of prominent mid-19th century romantics.

Jose Mármol

Mármol is most known for his semi-autobiographical fiction ‘Amalia’ which, when it was published in its entirety in 1854, constituted the first full-length Argentine novel.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1818, he’d grown up to be a vehement opposer of ruling federalist politician Juan Manuel de Rosas and had abandoned his university studies amidst the flurry of a growing opposition movement.

Mármol fled Argentina in 1840 at the height of Rosas’ regime. He lived in exile in Montevideo alongside several other Argentine authors, including fellow romantic writer Echeverría. Having been arrested a year before for distributing anti-Rosas literature, he claims he wrote his first poetry against the dictator from his prison cell.

Like his contemporaries, Mármol had similar ideas of what could be expressed through literature, and took advantage of the freer climate which existed in Uruguay to write from exile. There he founded several journals – among them ‘La Semana’ – through which he launched scathing attacks on Rosas and earned himself the nickname “the poetic hangman”.

His journalism and poetry took a no-holds-barred approach, as demonstrated in his poem ‘A Rosas, el 25 de Mayo de 1843′, which directly and strongly denounced the Argentine ruler. The poem is noted for its 14 syllable alexandrine lines, a structure which was at that time more commonly associated with the 12 syllable equivalent of the French and English poets.

Although chronologically Echeverría was the forerunner to romanticism in Argentina, the influence of the European romantics was evident not only in Mármol’s poetry but also in his plays ‘El poeta’ and ‘El cruzado’. His celebrated autobiographical poem ‘El peregrino’ for example, spans 12 cantos and draws comparisons with the narrative poetry of leading English romantic Lord Byron, as well as the poetry of some Argentine contemporaries.

Mármol took Echeverría’s same sordid vision of Argentina under Rosas, and expanded and deepened it in the realistic fiction ‘Amalia’ – a tragic tale of two young lovers caught up in the anti-Rosas movement.

The heroine of the story is an indigenous woman living in Buenos Aires, whose life transpires between the polarisation of barbarism and civilisation. She falls for Eduardo while she and her cousin Daniel are sheltering him from military persecution, but before the trio can make their escape, Rosas’ federalist henchmen arrive.

The combined use of costumbrismo alongside romanticism paints a detailed picture of life under a violent dictatorship, resulting in ‘Amalia’ being held up as an early example of social romanticism. Because the novel mixes fictional characters with several living figures, it can also be labelled a historical novel, and along with Sarmiento’s ‘Facundo’ it is considered a precursor to the important genre of ‘dictator novel’ which would later appear in Latin American literature.

Juan Manuel de Rosas

Mármol started writing ‘Amalia’ in Uruguay in 1844 and, as Sarmiento had done with ‘Facundo’, began publishing it as a feuilleton inside ‘La semana’ review in 1851. The serials were discontinued following the fall of Rosas in 1852, when Mármol returned to live in Argentina after a period of more than 12 years in exile.

The first edition of ‘Amalia’ as a complete novel appeared in Argentina in 1854 and was immediately adopted as Argentina’s national novel. Although the love story which ran through it accounted for a large portion of its appeal, the book respected certain traits of the serial format and didn’t come together especially well as a single novel.

Mármol’s literary style has since come under fire for borrowing too much from European writers of the time, and for lacking the quality of Sarmiento’s ‘Facundo’ and the authenticity of Echeverría’s ‘El matadero’. Renowned Argentine critic David Viñas observed that his greatest aesthetic achievements came when he wrote about barbarism in crude realistic terms, and when writing about his protagonist Amalia, his writing became too ornamental and rhetorical.

Contemporary reviews occasionally draw comparison with Scottish romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, and whilst nowadays the novel finds its reader base mostly among students of romantic or 19th-century literature, it enjoyed enormous popularity for over a century in Argentina.

In 1914 the book was adapted for silent film – making ‘Amalia’ not only Argentina’s first full-length novel, but also the first feature-length Argentine film production.

Mármol’s career as an author ended with ‘Amalia’, as though his inspiration to write left along with Rosas, and while a succession of anti-Rosas novels followed in its footsteps, none were as well received as this landmark first novel. Shortly thereafter, he assumed the position of director of Argentina’s National Library, joining the likes of Marcos Sastre, whose bookstore provided the setting of the Generation of 37′s literary salon 20 years earlier, in an impressive line-up of directors considered crucial in the makeup of Argentina’s intellectual and historical fabric.