El Crack () is a 1981 Spanish film drama co-written and directed by José Luis Garci, starring Alfredo Landa. José Luis Garci won the Oscar to Best Foreign picture the next year with his next film "Volver a Empezar" ("Begin The Beguine"), the first Oscar won by Spanish cinema. The plot was inspired by the novels written by Dashiell Hammett, to whom the film is dedicated. It is a detective film and basically a Spanish film noir. The whole story takes place in Madrid and New York City in December 1980. Plot Germán Areta (nicknamed "El Piojo") is a 43-year-old private detective in Madrid. He previously spent 12 years as a Police Detective and now has his own Private Eye agency solving mostly "routine" cases like marital infidelities, working absences, minor celebrity-related information and other matters. Along with him works his employee and "jack-of-all-trades" Cárdenas, (nicknamed "El Moro"), a chatty and funny man and former car thief, once arrested and after that freed by Germán while he was in the Police. Moro is German's main connection with the underworld and night life. One day, Francisco Medina, a widower and mysterious man, comes to German's office and asks him to find his daughter, Isabel, who was 17 years old when she ran away two years ago. The only reference he can provide is a former boyfriend she had, Nico, who now works as a radio DJ. Germán comes in contact with him and learns that she became pregnant of him; Nico says he told her that it was fine for him and they could have the baby, but her father opposed and forced her to have an abortion in a London clinic. Just after she recovered from the abortion she run away from home and Nico lost her trail, until half a year later he got word she was in Madrid working in Las Gatitas, a high-end nightclub, as an escort (a barely-legal cover for prostitution). Indirectly it is shown that, in the best cinema-noir line, Germán is a cold-blooded, hard-boiled man, disenchanted of a lonely life and tired of his dirty work and the violent underworld surrounding it, but nevertheless in his spare time, Germán has a blossoming relationship with Carmen, a nurse he met when he was in hospital some time ago. Carmen has a four-year-old daughter, Maite, born from a former relation with a married doctor. Carmen has