Resumen:
El crack (1981), El crack dos (1983) and El crack cero (2019) by Jose Luis Garci make up a trilogy that adapts the genre of American film noir to Madrid's reality during the Transition, spanning from the months before the death of Francisco Franco until 1982. This article analyzes what we consider to be the main expressive key of the three titles: the visual continuity and complementarity between German Areta, the leading detective, and Madrid's views. We detected two aesthetic patterns sustained throughout the trilogy: the urban landscape shots presented in an internal dialogue with Areta's gaze and the non-narrative successions of pictures of the city, where there's no depiction of the protagonist. Both resources allow us to deploy a textual analysis of the films to illustrate how that city character progression is built, typical of classic film noir but much more radical in the hands of Garci.
