The Beast Must Die

Roman Vinoly Barreto's 1952 Argentine film is adapted from Nicholas Blake's novel. After his son is run over and killed, a crime writer decides to find the driver himself. Years of investigation lead him to the man, and he plans to kill him. The film proceeds less through the revenge itself than through the man's habit of keeping records. The writer puts everything in a diary, and that diary becomes both the instrument of the plan and its greatest danger. Narciso Ibanez Menta leads and was among the best-known thriller actors in Argentine cinema. The cinematography stays close to the language of noir: shadow, rain, tight interiors. The same novel was filmed about twenty years later by Claude Chabrol. Who it's for: those who like Latin American noir and literary adaptation. Who it's not for: viewers who do not want to approach the death of a child; the film begins there.