La traición de Rita Hayworth

When Guillermo Cabrera Infante read The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth, he was "captivated not only by its oral charm but also to see that it was a novel with celluloid pages: the factory of the plot was the cinema." A story of life in a provincial town in Argentina in the 1930s and 1940s, the book reveals with disturbing crudeness the alienation of a community dominated by film myths, and specifically, the story of a frightened boy who feels different from others and who finds in the cinema a refuge and a window to the outside world. On one and the other, he plans the threat on the silver screen of a Rita Hayworth as mythical as she is treacherous with unsuspecting worshippers.