Tres tristes tigres (1968) Raoul Ruiz

Three Sad Tigers, the first feature film by Raoul Ruiz, was released in Santiago in November 1968. At the Bandera cinema, the premiere evening brought together the actors of the film, the playwright Alejandro Sieveking – young author of the play from which the film is based. supposed to be the adaptation – and, somewhat out of place in the picture, three middle-aged men in merchant navy uniforms. Captains Serafín Selanio, Enrique Reimann and Ernesto Ruiz, the father of the young filmmaker, created the company Los Capitanes to produce the film – and ensure that Raoul, author of three unfinished cinematographic attempts until then, would this time achieve his goals. . The result is there: a rough, dullly labyrinthine film, which brilliantly plays with the particularities of language and attitudes of the capital, Three Sad Tigers embodies upon its release the hope of a new Chilean cinema – completely in reverse of a tendency towards the complacent glorification of national identity. In 1969, the film was selected in competition at Locarno. To give himself a South American look, Raoul Ruiz grew a mustache that would never leave him. Three Sad Tigers wins the Grand Prize. (Nicolas Le Thierry d’Ennequin) “In Three Sad Tigers, I tried to translate what people my age were experiencing at that time. We spent most of our time in bars, and I came up with the idea of making the bar a metaphor for the circularity of time, for the feeling that all days were the same and that we could waking up one fine morning aged 70 without anything having happened. There were a lot of references, but much more literary than cinematic. I borrowed from Joyce’s People of Dublin the way of leading a story by leaving the important elements in the background to bring seemingly insignificant details to the fore. I remember that when I watched Hitchcock, I really liked the presence of characters on the fringes of the story, who suddenly appeared without having anything to do with the story. In his films, there is always someone staring at the camera and then disappearing. » (Raoul Ruiz, interview with René Naranjo)