Neither have I. But if you want to feel first hand life in an alien civilization, I highly recommend you to watch this 1950s Argentinian movie.
The main character, played by the tango singer/actor Alberto Castillo, is supposed to come back to Argentina after a 20 year period, during which he became a very popular singer in other countries and now decides -nostalgia- to return to his native country where he has a flamboyant reception during his opening night in front of an adoring public.
Neighborhood chums he frequented as a child and young teenager went all of them to their old friend's premiere, hoping maybe to see him after the show and remember old times with him.
This movie has all the ingredients to grab the least intellectual part of the population, done during the best times of the Peronismo, movement that talked directly to their "Dear shirtless", that adored Perón and Evita.
His career was meteoric and his popularity lasted for over twenty years.
I mentioned at the beginning an "alien civilization" in the sense that seventy years later we watch this movie in awe seeing the complete change in customs and emotional reactions these people have in front of different happenings that nowadays would mean very little or nothing at all to us.
The acting is OK for this type of production, entertaining, fast, dynamic editing, but something that really took my breath away was to notice in the theater scene, where those two are seating and carrying on a dialog while the surrounding crowd remains frozen, like statues, in what nowadays we know as Mannequin Challenge, where you gotta stay still and do nothing. They all held their positions during the whole sequence! When one thinks that they came up with such an aesthetic solution SEVENTY YEARS AGO, one realizes that there is nothing new under the sun.
We must know that Alberto Castillo the man, in real life, became a certified Dr. gynecologist, because his Italian parents (Alberto Salvador De Lucca, his real name) wanted him to have some "real" profession, since they considered tango singing to be a doubtful way of making a living.
But since women started going to see the "gynecologist singer" in droves after seeing him in movies, he decided it was time to close his practice to become only a tango singer, and his legend started.
His parents must have been very surprised when their son became an Argentinian idol for the lower classes, adored by them, making a handful of incredibly popular movies, singing in theaters all over the country and Latin America, making records, etc.
Alberto Castillo died at 87.
