edgepedia

Arts and culture / Screen and stage / Film and television / Films and standalone screen works / Individual films by title and year / Drama and biographical films (individual works) / Drama films 1960s / Released 1960 to 1965

General · Edgepedia4 min read

The Hands in the Trap

The Hands in the Trap is the English title of La mano en la trampa (Spanish for "The Hand in the Trap"), a 1961 black-and-white drama directed by the Argentine filmmaker Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and made as a co-production of Argentina and Spain1. The film stars Elsa Daniel, Francisco Rabal, Leonardo Favio, and María Rosa Gallo, and it won the International Critics' Prize (FIPRESCI) at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, where it screened in competition1. It is the final part of the trilogy of family dramas, begun with La casa del ángel (1957) and La caída (1959), that made Torre Nilsson and his wife, the novelist and screenwriter Beatriz Guido, internationally known names2.

Key factDetail
Original titleLa mano en la trampa; released in English as The Hand in the Trap3
Director and writersLeopoldo Torre Nilsson; screenplay by Beatriz Guido, Ricardo Luna, Ricardo Muñoz Suay, and Torre Nilsson, based on Guido's novel of the same name4
Principal castElsa Daniel (Laura), Francisco Rabal (Cristóbal Achával), Leonardo Favio (Miguel), María Rosa Gallo (Inés)3
ProductionArgentina–Spain co-production; Producciones Ángel and UNINCI of Madrid; black and white, mono sound3
ReleaseWorld premiere 1 May 1961; Argentine release 8 June 19615 • 4
RuntimeReported as 89, 90, or 91 minutes depending on the source4 • 3
AwardInternational Critics' Prize (FIPRESCI), Cannes 19611

Spoilers

Plot

Laura (Elsa Daniel) finishes the school year at a convent boarding school and returns to the old family mansion in a town near Buenos Aires, where her mother and aunt embroider dresses for wealthy families and live shut in among rituals and silences4. The Lavigne family are aristocrats in decline, descendants of the founders of the town6. In the highest room of the house lives someone no one names, a relative the family hides out of shame4.

Driven by curiosity, Laura begins to spy, and with the help of Miguel (Leonardo Favio), a young man who courts her, she sets out to discover who inhabits the sealed upper floor4. She finds that her aunt, supposedly married abroad, lives there voluntarily to escape the dishonor caused by the breaking of her engagement7. Shaken by the secret and by the family's pettiness, Laura arranges a confrontation with the aunt's former fiancé, the playboy Cristóbal Achával (Francisco Rabal), and is herself caught in the trap7 • 3.

Style and themes

The Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA) describes the film as built from the elements of classic horror tales: rumors of a deformed being kept in seclusion, a spectral presence expressed in noises, long white robes, and ethereal curtains, and a flashback that explains the family's original "curse"8. In this narrative logic Laura is the figure who defies prohibitions, finds the ghost, and discovers what afflicts it; unlike the tradition, however, the outcome is not liberating but catastrophic8.

The French encyclopedia Larousse places the film's interest less in mystery or suspense than in its portrait of the ambiguous, sclerotic world of the Argentine provincial haute bourgeoisie, the territory of Beatriz Guido's fiction, in a universe where the real blends with the dream; contemporary critics compared its imagery to that of Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni7. Themes from Torre Nilsson and Guido's earlier films reappear here in their most concentrated form, and the director considered it his most complete film8.

Place in Torre Nilsson's career

Torre Nilsson (1924–1978), son of the director Leopoldo Torres Ríos, was the central figure in the transition from the old Buenos Aires studio system to auteur cinema in Argentina, working from scripts written with his wife Beatriz Guido (1922–1988)2. The trilogy La casa del ángel (1957), La caída (1959), and La mano en la trampa (1961) placed the pair among the ten most important living filmmakers in the judgment of English-speaking critics, and Elsa Daniel, Torre Nilsson's frequent lead actress, had made a strong impression at Cannes in 1959 with La caída2.

At Cannes in 1961 the film competed for the Palme d'Or without winning it, but it took the International Critics' Prize awarded by FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics1 • 6. The film opened in Argentina on 8 June 1961 and in Madrid on 17 June 19634. It has since been regarded as a classic of Argentine cinema and one of the most important works of its director's filmography9.

References

  1. La mano en la trampa, Festival de Cannes
  2. Argentinian Cinema, Festival de Cannes (2011)
  3. The Hand in the Trap (1961), IMDb
  4. La mano en la trampa (1961), cinenacional.com
  5. The Hand in the Trap (1961), Kinoafisha
  6. La mano en la trampa (1961), SensaCine
  7. La Main dans le piège, Larousse, Dictionnaire mondial des films
  8. La mano en la trampa, MALBA
  9. La mano en la trampa, Casa de América

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1960 to 1965

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?

© 2026 Biostate AI. Free to use with credit under the Edgepedia Community License. Developers: read Edgepedia by API or MCP. Embed a reference card.

Report an error in this article

The Hands in the Trap

Pick at least one reason.