Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Comparing these two films intelligently seems virtually impossible. Although both portray Chile under Allende's Popular Unity government and the eventual overthrow of that regime, Avenue of the Americas takes a documentary approach, focusing on the life of the Chileans in the years before the coup, and on American involvement in the coup. It's Raining in Santiago fictionalizes the coup itself, in the tradition of Costa Gavras' Z. Together, the two films recreate the tragedy of Allende's Chile. Although a majority of the workers and peasants supported his government and its reforms, although the country's productivity increased...
...produced Avenue of the Americas, says he originally went to Chile in 1972 to see what was going on, to document the building of a socialist society. Produced by Locke, directed by Peruvian Jorge Reynes and written by Charles Horman '64 (one of two Americans killed during the 1973 coup), the film depicts those people who supported the U.P. coalition, recording their faith in Allende and his policies. When the truckers who formed the basis of Chile's infrastructure went on strike--supported by money from the CIA--these were the people who refused to slow production, who walked...
Avenue of the Americas is not perfect, of course. A lengthy string of interviews can become tedious, and often the film presumes a fairly extensive background in the history of the coup. But overall, Avenue gives an extraordinarily beautiful picture of Chile under Allende, and how the situation deteriorated in the final months. Not by concentrating on leaders and political maneuvering, but by letting the people on the streets and in the factories explain in their own words their goals and achievements, Locke and his companions show the tragedy of the U.P. overthrow...
...underlying cause of the trouble is Cyprus. Three years ago, after an Athens-inspired coup against President-Archbishop Makarios, Turkey invaded the island to protect its Turkish minority. A strongly pro-Greek U.S. Congress responded by cutting off military aid to Ankara, which retaliated by taking control of 26 U.S. military installations in Turkey. Congress's action did not make many points for the U.S. in Athens; the Administration was blamed for backing the hated military junta that collapsed after the failure of the Cyprus coup and for not stopping the Turks. The new democratic regime of Prime Minister...
Birmingham's coup de grâce, however, is a chapter called "Taste." He takes up what he calls "the complicated question of black taste, or perhaps, lack of it," and finds that all is "not quite right." Why, puzzles Birmingham, should the aristocratic wife of Washington's black mayor "satisfy herself with plastic plants in her house and settle for brightly colored glass ceiling fixtures"? Why does a Harlem socialite place a huge Steuben glass bowl in the center of her coffee table and fill it with gold-painted walnuts? Why, he asks, do so many blacks...