Even in the effervescent creative atmosphere of mid-1960s Buenos Aires, Fischerman’s first film struck a discordant note: improvisation, bits of poor musical comedy, literary allusions… Rejecting the ‘fine finishing’ of films aspiring to ‘quality’ as well as the alibis of militant cinema, Fischerman’s movie seemed closer to alternative contemporary European film, midway between Skolimowski and Carmelo Bene, with whom the director certainly was not familiar.
“The most open, innovative and insolent film of Argentine cinema” (Alberto Tabbia) is based on The Tempest, but here Prospero’s island is the abandoned studios of Lumiton, a leading production company in the 1930s and 40s. Overrun by the ‘good’ Players having fun on the set while the ‘bad’ Fallen Angels up in the attic wait for the right moment to reconquer the terrain, the fight between beings of light and darkness transcends the Shakespearean theme in a playful game that the suffering and violence of Argentine history weighed down with a heavier interpretation, the eternal struggle for power between the center and periphery.
An isolated work at the time that would later generate a cult following, according to film critic David Oubiña The Players vs. ángeles caídos paved the way for underground films of the following years. Later on independent cinema of the 1990s and, to a further extent, the new century, recognized it as a pivotal work, breathing fresh air and freedom into Argentine film.