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| Cronos |
Making its auspicious debut during Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, del Toro's first feature is an elegant, sardonic and ultimately very moving reworking of the vampire and monster genres.
Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) is an elderly antiques dealer who discovers a curiously rapacious mechanical device that bestows vigour and seeming immortality upon its owner - though also endowing a debilitating thirst for human blood.
The film's production fortuitously brought together a cast and crew with whom del Toro collaborates to this day: cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, co-producer Bertha Navarro and actors Ron Perlman (whom del Toro vigorously championed for the role of
Hellboy) and Luppi (with whom del Toro would work again in
The Devil's Backbone).
