The Expropriation is an ‘elitist’ film. Raúl Ruiz is inspired (like Enrique Urteaga) by Eisenstein’s teachings, but filtered through Godard’s example. An intellectual montage – playing on mock interviews, psychodrama, rebus-shots, and a parody of the film fantastique – tends to scatter itself in a fireworks display of significant moments, resulting in a revue-film in the style of La Chinoise (1967) or Rocha’s The Lion Has Seven Heads (1970).

The Expropriation sets out to expose an excessively legalistic, conciliatory, ‘fair play’ moment in the politics of Chile’s Popular Unity. The Delegate for Agricultural Reform, the land owner and, consequently, the farmers themselves go out their way to be loyal, civil, tolerant and understanding. The owner offers his land without indemnity and, so as not be outdone, the farmers refuse him. The Delegate and the owner ‘decently’ talk politics and deep philosophy. These ‘Decrees of August 4’, where one imagines the master’s ancestors turning in their graves, can clearly only serve the forces of reaction.

While an armed worker – forever walking past these talk-fests – silently demands a political comportment that is less policed but more effectively revolutionary, the owner’s wife, her eyes to the camera lens, rounds up the allies for her cause: "There are many of you, and you can help us. Don’t abandon us!" And we know that she has been understood.