Word: santiagos
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...process with crimes or with force. History is ours, it is made by the people." Allende, Charles Horman, and more than 50,000 Chileans have paid with their lives for their dream of a better world. The people who made Avenue of the Americas and It's Raining in Santiago share that dream--a dream of a wealthy society in which all share in a country's wealth, where foreign capital does not exploit cheap labor, where children are no longer malnourished and no one is homeless. Both these films may be biased in favor of Allende...
...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 and living standards rose, the middle class ultimately...
...obtained from ABC, UPI and an East German news agency, of the coup itself, it does not concentrate on the event, viewing it more as the culmination of a long process of aggression against Allende's regime rather than as something that itself needs exploration. It's Raining in Santiago takes the opposite approach: starting at dawn in Valparaiso on September 11, 1973, Chilean director-writer Helvio Soto and his French cast recreate the atmosphere of that day, using flashbacks to provide the context in which the coup occurred...
...came as no surprise to anyone on the Chilean left: "It's raining in Santiago" was the agreed-upon signal that came over the radio informing U.P. supporters that the army was on its way. For months, the right had been creating an atmosphere of conflict; one coup had already been aborted. U.P. militants had already occupied factories and buildings in preparation for a coup, and in the Moneda Palace, Allende and the rest of the U.P. leadership viewed it as a final test...
...Raining in Santiago ends with another real event, the funeral of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda a few weeks after the coup. Although Neruda's mourners were already aware of the nature of the new regime, they showed their support for Allende and the U.P., chanting slogans of the left despite imminent reprisals. Neruda's funeral march becomes a wake for Allende's government, but it is clear Soto believes the spirit that kept Jarre singing lives on in Chile. Soto's vision is a romantic, idealized one--far more idealized than the vision of Chile presented in Avenue...