Golden Age of Argentine cinema

Background (1896–1933) 1896–1929: The Argentine silent era is generally considered to have made the first films of the country in the 1890s.|alt=Eugenio Py, a pioneer of Argentine filmmaking, stands full-body in a black-and-white photo, next to a vintage camera Argentine cinema is almost as old as cinema in the world. Thomas Edison's first kinetoscopes arrived in Buenos Aires in 1894, but true film projections were only possible thanks to the Lumière brothers' cinematograph, with which a series of presentations were made on 28 July 1896 at the Teatro Odeón. In 1897, the first projectors and cameras—from the Lumière and Gaumont firms—reached the country through Enrique Lepage's photography store, Casa Lepage. Their technician, the French Eugenio Py, became the first person to systematically film in Argentina; he shot the 1897 short La bandera argentina, a register of the national flag which is generally considered the country's first film. Other authors consider that the first films belong to the German Federico Fignero, who shot different views with a vitascope in 1896, aided by the camera operator José Steimberg. In addition to Lepage and Py, the third figure who dominated film production at this time was the Austrian Max Glücksmann, who was initially an employee of Casa Lepage and later acquired the firm in 1908. The works of these early years of Argentine cinema correspond to actuality films. As noted by historian José Agustín Mahieu, this stage of national cinema "naively discovers the magic of movement, the direct capture of the landscape, of the event. The camera is still a primary eye planted in front of the facts. Over any other concern (artistic or cultural) prevails the technical curiosity, the exploration of a tool that is just beginning to be known." Thus, a small-scale commercial exploitation began, with the Casa Lepage offering projectors and films to restaurants, cafes or other entertainment venues. The company dominated the country's film production for a decade, dedicated to filming curiosities and current events such as official state visits, festivities and tourist sights. In 1900, the first movie theater, the Salón Nacional, was inaugurated, and soon more venues dedicated to the projection of films were opened. 's La Revolución de Mayo (1909), regarded as the first narrative film of the country.|alt=Still from La Revolución de Mayo (1909), directed by Mario Gallo, depicting men in 19th-century costumes; Argentina's first narrative film At the end of the 1900s, the incipient Argentine cinema made significant progress with the appearance of the first narrative films, which encouraged production and distribution. These were the work of the Italian Mario Gallo, who had arrived in Buenos Aires a few years before as part of an opera company. There is confusion as to which was the first narrative film in the country: those who date its release in 1908 consider it to be El fusilamiento de Dorrego, while more recent researchers point out that this film is actually from 1910 and the first one was really La Revolución de Mayo, released in 1909. For this reason, May 23 is considered National Film Day in the country, in commemoration of the release date of the latter film. In the manner of the French ''film d'art'' trend, Gallo's films were closer to photographed theatre, almost always on historical topics. In 1914, Glücksmann produced the oldest surviving feature film, Amalia, very similar in style to Gallo's films. The film was an initiative of the Buenos Aires aristocracy, and premiered at the prestigious Teatro Colón with the attendance of President Victorino de la Plaza. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, European film production retreated, which resulted in an abundance of Argentine production in the following years. As noted by Mahieu, during this time Argentine cinema "tends to abandon its character of empirical adventure, to become an entertainment industry. New distributors appeared, and in 1914 Pampa Film was founded, which produced several films." (1915) inaugurated a new boom period for Argentine silent cinema.|alt=Poster for the 1915 film Nobleza Gaucha'', an illustration of a gaucho riding a horse and swinging a lasso in the air Before the arrival of sound films, Argentina experienced a "golden age" of silent films and led their production in Spanish, with more than 100 feature films being made between 1915 and 1924, equal to the combined total of those made in Mexico and Spain. During the first three decades of the 20th century, more than 200 silent feature films were produced in the country, in addition to a large number of documentaries, newsreels and shorter fictional works. Another aspect little mentioned by historians is that the last four Paramount productions with Gardel were in fact the singer and Le Pera's own productions that the studio agreed to finance, with full property rights for both creators after a first period of commercial exploitation. Development (1933–1956) 1933–1936: Birth and growth of the industry The year 1933 meant the beginning of an industrial organization in Argentine cinema due to the emergence of Argentina Sono Film and Lumiton (the first two optical sound film studios in Latin America) and the almost simultaneous release of their first productions ¡Tango! and Los tres berretines, respectively, the first feature films with optical sound in Argentine cinema. According to Matthew B. Karush, the "growth of Argentine cinema resulted from the efforts of small entrepreneurs who proved adept at catering to local tastes", citing Ángel Mentasti—founder of Argentina Sono Film—as a typical example. Inspired by the Hollywood model, Mentasti introduced serial industrial production to local filmmaking, and his plan consisted of "[forming] a company on the basis of three films and not release the first until the second had started and the third was announced." The project was born after Luis Moglia Barth contacted Mentasti with the idea of producing a film entirely starring the popular performers of revue theater, tango and radio. The duo secured financing from two different capitalists, which inspired them to create the company Argentina Sono Film and undertake serial production to give them a better chance of negotiating with distributors. The musical ¡Tango! premiered on 27 April 1933 and attracted audiences for its select cast of popular performers, including Luis Sandrini, Azucena Maizani, Mercedes Simone, Libertad Lamarque, Pepe Arias and Tita Merello, among others. While Tango! was being released, Argentina Sono Film was shooting its second film, Dancing (1933), which had little repercussion, while the great success of the third film, Riachuelo (1934), ensured the economic viability of the studio. , Greater Buenos Aires, . Lumiton was founded by César José Guerrico, Enrique Telémaco Susini, Miguel Mugica and Luis Romero Carranza, a group of well-off entrepreneurs who had been responsible for introducing radio to the country in 1920. The group had traveled to Hollywood in 1931, where they studied the novelty of optical sound films and decided to bring the new technology to Argentina. After purchasing complete film equipment at Bell & Howell in Chicago, they returned to Buenos Aires and began building a studio in Munro, Buenos Aires Province, replicating the sound stages they had seen in Hollywood. Thanks to the financial backing of its founding partners, Lumiton became a pioneer in the industrial and autonomous conceptualization of production. The company brought in experienced technicians (including cinematographer John Alton) and opened its first film gallery in December 1932, beginning production with an adaptation of the successful play Los tres berretines. Released on 19 May 1933, the film's credits do not name the director, screenwriter or technical staff. Although ¡Tango! is often considered the first success of classical Argentine cinema, research on the box-office records of the time indicates that Los tres berretines had an even greater impact on audiences. In both films, Sandrini plays an awkward, stuttering comic archetype that he had previously consecrated in the theatrical version of Los tres berretines. With some variations, Sandrini played this character in the rest of his films of the decade, which established him as a star of humorous cinema in the Spanish-speaking world during the 1930s and early 1940s. and Ignacio Corsini in Ídolos de la radio (1934), directed by Eduardo Morera and produced by Estudios Río de la Plata. The joint success of ¡Tango! and Los tres berretines confirmed the existence of a growing demand and led to the simultaneous appearance of several new production companies. The growth of the industry was reflected in the increase in production, from 6 films released in 1933 to 14 in 1935, half of which were directorial debuts. and Delia Garcés in Kilómetro 111 (1938), directed by Mario Soffici and produced by Argentina Sono Film. Soffici was an important filmmaker of this period and directed for Argentina Sono Film El alma del bandoneón (1935), La barra mendocina (1935), Cadetes de San Martín (1937)—with which he experienced censorship for the first time after an army refusal to his original script—and Viento norte (1937). In 1938, which was a transitional year for Argentina Sono Film, Soffici released social films such as Kilómetro 111 (1938), El viejo doctor (1939) and Héroes sin fama (1940), which gave him greater prestige. However, Soffici's most celebrated film, Prisioneros de la tierra (1939), was released under another production company: Pampa Film. In this new context, several exiled artists, such as Francisco Petrone and María Rosa Gallo, returned to Argentina, while others, such as Libertad Lamarque and Carlos Hugo Christensen, remained abroad. launching her long partnership with Bó, whose internationally recognized sexploitation films secured her lasting status as a national sex symbol. and Rossana Zucker in El jefe (1958), directed by Fernando Ayala. Film historian Mariano Calistro proposed in 1984 an alternative periodization for the years immediately after the classical era, extending from 1957 to 1968, grounded in the historical trajectory of the period's filmmakers and the shifting affinities of their often loosely defined groups of belonging. Some writers consider the premiere of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's La casa del ángel in 1957 as a turning point in Argentine cinema, marking the beginning of a new stage with a different proposal both in style and conception. Nilsson's early cycle, scripted with Beatriz Guido, including La caída (1959) and La mano en la trampa (1960), consolidated a fracture with the classical-industrial model by placing interior conflicts and adolescent subjectivities at the center of the narrative. Parallel to this, Fernando Ayala, often paired with Héctor Olivera, set up Aries Cinematográfica to operate within the emerging regulatory framework. With El jefe (1958) and El candidato (1959), Ayala modeled a sustainable production firm that balanced social allegory with industrial continuity. Such projects proved crucial to stabilizing the sector and to anchoring the broader passage into modern cinema. In 1957, the government enacted Decree Law 62/57, with measures to promote national cinematography as an industry, art and means of dissemination. Passed after hard bargaining among guilds, producers and technicians, the decree created the National Institute of Cinematography (INC) to administer financing and regulation, equated cinematic freedom with press freedom, and earmarked a 10% levy on ticket sales to capitalize production credits, selective subsidies, promotion and an official film school. A later rule capping credits at one feature per company per year prompted larger firms to split into multiple labels to qualify, while "quality awards" tied to funding nudged average standards upward. in Tres veces Ana (1961), directed by David José Kohon. This new context led to the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers in the early 1960s, who opposed "commercial" cinema and experimented with unconventional cinematic techniques. The new trend, initially known as New Argentine Cinema (Spanish: "nuevo cine argentino") and later as the Generation of '60 (Spanish: "''Generación del '60"), was not a unified movement and included a series of directors who made their feature film debut between the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Enrique Dawi with Río abajo (1960), Simón Feldman with El negoción (1959) and Los de la mesa diez (1960), David Kohon with Prisioneros de una noche (1962) and Tres veces Ana (1961), José Martínez Suárez with El crack (1960), Dino Minniti with Tiernas ilusiones (1961), René Mugica with El centroforward murió al amanecer (1961), and Lautaro Murúa with Shunko (1960) and Alias Gardelito (1961). By the mid-1960s, critics already spoke of the "end" of this first wave, yet its imprint was durable. Cine-clubs such as Núcleo and journals like Tiempo de Cine'' elevated the debates around modern cinema, while INC subsidies, short-film grants from the 1958 Fondo Nacional de las Artes, and project-based production models institutionalized many of the practices pioneered by the Generation of the '60. These legacies shaped subsequent directors and ensured that, even after the movement's critical exhaustion, its ethos remained embedded in Argentine film culture. ==Style and themes==

1933–1939: Tango and working-class culture Generally speaking, the Argentine cinema of the 1930s was characterized by a deliberate effort to portray the working classes, which, in turn, emerged as its main consumers. For many spectators, cinema became an arena for social integration, offering models of speech, behavior and social aspiration. Immigration was a recurrent theme in early sound films, reflecting both optimism and ambivalence about Argentina's social composition. According to Valeria Manzano, the Peronist government supported "highly moral films, which exalted values such as solidarity, the maintenance of family unity, and patriotism, and pointed out binary oppositions that were typical of the Peronist public discourse, such as 'people-oligarchy' or 'luxury-austerity'." Argentine cinema developed a distinctive form of film noir, shaped by both American and French influences while drawing on local cultural elements such as tango and popular literature. French critics coined the term film noir in the postwar era to describe 1940s American crime films which blurred the boundaries between good and evil and emphasized moral ambiguity, nocturnal atmospheres, and feelings of paranoia and fatalism. In Argentina, these traits appeared early on, with silent films like Bajo la mirada de Dios (1925) and the first sound-era crime successes such as Arturo S. Mom's Monte criollo (1935) and Palermo (1937), which merged crime plots with popular music and tango. Directors like Manuel Romero and Daniel Tinayre later expanded on this formula with films like Ven... mi corazón te llama (1942) and Vidas marcadas (1942), respectively, incorporating the archetype of the femme fatale. Christensen's No abras nunca esa puerta (1952) and Viñoly Barreto's La bestia debe morir (1952) showcased atmospheric visuals, psychological tension and morally complex characters. Meanwhile, Apenas un delincuente (1948) reflected Italian neorealist influences, while Los tallos amargos (1956) captured the essence of classic noir with its subjective narrative and bleak tone. The portrayal of law enforcement was often reverential due to political pressures, leading some filmmakers to create "police-less" noirs, as seen in Los tallos amargos. Complementary cycles like El vampiro negro (1953), Barrio gris (1954) or Deshonra (1952) broadened noir toward carceral melodrama and social tableaux of Buenos Aires' underworld, while adaptations from the Séptimo Círculo detective series underscored the period's interplay between literary prestige and pulp suspense. These films exploited chiaroscuro lighting, fractured temporality and grotesque villains such as Nathán Pinzón's child predator in El vampiro negro, pushing the classical codes toward darker, more disturbing registers. ==Historiography==

1959–1966: Foundational works in the 2000s. The great turning point in classical Argentine film studies came in the 1990s, when much new scholarship on Argentine cinema began to appear, and although the classical period did not appear as the most studied, the texts still multiplied exponentially. These new texts avoided the stance of classical historiography, which viewed the history of Argentine cinema as a succession of notable films and events. They also introduced semiotic or structuralist tools to the analysis of films, which until then had been based on summarizing their plots. The publication in 1992 of the book Cine argentino. La otra historia, compiled by Sergio Wolf, was pivotal and inaugurated this new renovating stage, with texts deliberately questioning the traditional narratives of Argentine cinema. The studies from this period were characterized by not being all-encompassing but rather by focusing on specific themes selected based on different theoretical or methodological criteria. With the arrival of the 21st century came the publication of Cine argentino, industria y clasicismo (2000), a comprehensive two-volume work edited by Claudio España. This influential collective research delved deeply into the classical era of Argentine film production from 1933 to 1956. Since the early 2000s, studies on classical Argentine cinema have undergone a significant transformation, as the longstanding disregard or indifference toward this era gave way to renewed interest from scholars who have approached it with an unprecedented level of theoretical and methodological rigor. These texts demonstrate different levels of focus on specific topics from the period, emphasizing the importance of introducing new questions and perspectives that were overlooked in traditional accounts, rather than simply rewriting the classical past. Examples include Horacio Campodónico's political-economic analysis (2005), Ana Laura Lusnich's study of the "social-folkloric drama" genre (2005), and Adrián Melo's research on LGBT representations in Argentine cinema (2009). The fields of cultural studies and transnational studies further enriched the exploration of classical Argentine cinema. In the realm of the former, Matthew Karush published a book in 2012 that examined classical Argentine cinema as part of the "mass cultural commodities", understanding the convergence of media industries as a phenomenon of meaning within the films themselves. Transnational studies, on the other hand, opened up new problems in the comparative study of the Argentine classical era with that of other countries, notably Mexico. Most recently, several historians identified with the New Cinema History movement—which analyzes cinema as a social phenomenon—have studied the audiences and filmgoing experiences of classical Argentine cinema, aspects until then unexplored by national film scholarship. ==Legacy==

Conservation Due to a long history of neglect in the preservation of Argentine films, much of the country's classical era cinema is considered lost. It is estimated that half of Argentine sound films are lost, a figure that rises to 90% in the case of silent films. Unlike most countries, Argentina has not adopted public policies that preserve the national film heritage, which has been a long-standing claim by the film-related community. This has led to the loss of a large amount of material and to the fact that of many films only a single copy survives in a poor condition, even some that are considered among the most important in Argentine cinema by critics and specialists. Many films survive but through incomplete copies, missing scenes, entire acts or musical numbers. From the beginning, the film industry was built around continuous production, with little interest in retaining material already released. As noted by Martín Miguel Pereira, "... industry produces material goods that, to a greater or lesser extent, are perishable. From canned sardines to a refrigerator, all products will be discarded and replaced or renewed at a certain point in time, once they are consumed or until they have exhausted their function. As astonishing as it may be to think of this procedure for what we now consider a work of art, cinema fulfilled the same cycle, with its specificities. A film was produced, distributed, consumed (exhibited) and then, if it could continue to yield revenues in an eventual retrospective exhibition or, by the 1960s, if it could be sold to television for reruns, it was kept." The abandoned Lumiton studios in Munro were rescued from demolition in the 1990s and converted into a museum run by the municipality of Vicente López, with a permanent collection of Lumiton's history, a screening room, and an extensive archive. In the 1990s, Fernando "Pino" Solanas presented a national law for the creation of the Cinematheque and Archive of the National Image (Spanish: Cinemateca y Archivo de la Imagen Nacional, CINAIN), in order to unify all the scattered and poorly preserved national film heritage in a single place. According to a study conducted by filmmaker Hernán Gaffet and film collectors Fernando Martín Peña and Octavio Fabiano, 50% of national sound films have been lost forever. Critics' lists of Prisioneros de la tierra (1939) by Mario Soffici, which has been considered the greatest Argentine film of all time on several occasions. Several films from the classical period have been listed among the best in the history of Argentine cinema. The Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken carried out polls to determine the greatest Argentine films of all time in the years 1977, 1984, 1991 and 2000. The results of the 2000 poll can be found in the 4th issue of La mirada cautiva, the museum's magazine, which also included the top 10 from the 1977 and 1984 polls. In the 1977 list, 8 of the top 10 results were films released before 1957, including Prisioneros de la tierra (1st place), La guerra gaucha (3rd place), Así es la vida (4th place), La vuelta al nido (5th place), Las aguas bajan turbias (6th place), La dama duende (7th place), Malambo (8th place) and Fuera de la ley (10th place). Due to the coincidences in the number of votes, the total list includes 812 titles and 62 ranking positions, For the first time, no pre-1960s film appeared in the top 10, and classical-era films were among those that decreased the most compared to the previous poll. As such, the results of the 2022 poll fueled the long-standing claim for the need for a national cinematheque. The films prior to 1957 that reached the top 100 of 2022 were: In 2022, the Spanish magazine Fotogramas included Los tres berretines (1933), Los martes, orquídeas (1941) and Dios se lo pague (1947) in its list of the "20 best Argentine films in history". ==Major figures==

Actors in La rubia Mireya (1948), directed by Manuel Romero and produced by Argentina Sono Film. • Florencio Parravicini (1876–1941) • Enrique Muiño (1881–1956) • Elías Alippi (1883–1942) • Enrique Serrano (1891–1965) • Francisco Álvarez (1892–1960) • Olinda Bozán (1894–1977) • Miguel Gómez Bao (1894–1961) • Tito Lusiardo (1896–1982) • Santiago Arrieta (1897–1975) • Ana Arneodo (1898–1977) • Floren Delbene (1898–1978) • Guillermo Battaglia (1899–1988) • Pedro López Lagar (1899–1977) • José "Pepe" Arias (1900–1967) • Mecha Ortiz (1900–1987) • Francisco Petrone (1902–1967) • Santiago Gómez Cou (1903–1984) • Niní Marshall (1903–1996) • Sofía Bozán (1904–1958) • José Gola (1904–1939) • Tita Merello (1904–2002) • Elsa O'Connor (1905–1947) • Luis Sandrini (1905–1980) • Libertad Lamarque (1908–2000) • Juan Carlos Thorry (1908–2000) • Homero Cárpena (1910–2001) • Enrique Diosdado (1910–1983) • Amanda Ledesma (1911–2000) • Paulina Singerman (1911–1984) • Alicia Vignoli (1911–2005) • Hugo del Carril (1912–1989) • Narciso Ibáñez Menta (1912–2004) • Alita Román (1912–1989) • Luisa Vehil (1912–1991) • Irma Córdoba (1913–2008) • Sabina Olmos (1913–1999) • Amelia Bence (1914–2016) • Armando Bó (1914–1981) • Roberto Escalada (1914–1986) • Elena Lucena (1914–2015) • Aída Alberti (1915–2006) • Fernando Lamas (1915–1982) • Ángel Magaña (1915–1982) • Jorge Salcedo (1915–1988) • Aída Luz (1917–2006) • Nury Montsé (1917–1971) • Delia Garcés (1919–2001) • Zully Moreno (1920–1999) • Tilda Thamar (1921–1989) • Malisa Zini (1921–1985) • Blanquita Amaro (1923–2007) • Silvana Roth (1924–2010) • María Duval (1926–2022) • Laura Hidalgo (1927–2005) • Mirtha Legrand (born 1927) • Silvia Legrand (1927–2020) • Zoe Ducós (1928–2002) • Rita Montero (1928–2013) • Susana Freyre (born 1929) • Olga Zubarry (1929–2012) • Lolita Torres (1930–2002) Directors Unlike the silent era, there were no female directors during the classical period, as industry leaders firmly prevented their emergence; and the first sound film directed by a woman did not come until 1960 with Vlasta Lah's Las furias. • Luis Bayón Herrera (1889–1956) • José A. Ferreyra (1889–1943) • Manuel Romero (1891–1954) • Orestes Caviglia (1893–1971) • Arturo S. Mom (1893–1965) • Carlos F. Borcosque (1894–1965) • Julio Irigoyen (1894–1967) • Leopoldo Torres Ríos (1899–1960) • Antonio Momplet (1899–1974) • Mario Soffici (1900–1977) • John Alton (1901–1996) • Carlos Schlieper (1902–1957) • Luis Moglia Barth (1903–1984) • Luis Saslavsky (1903–1995) • Ernesto Arancibia (1904–1963) • Augusto César Vatteone (1904–1979) • Arturo García Buhr (1905–1995) • León Klimovsky (1906–1996) • Eduardo Morera (1906–1997) • Antonio Ber Ciani (1907–2001) • Homero Manzi (1907–1951) • Francisco Mugica (1907–1985) • Hugo Fregonese (1908–1987) • Homero Cárpena (1910–2001) • Lucas Demare (1910–1981) • Daniel Tinayre (1910–1994) • Enrique Cahen Salaberry (1911–1991) • Alberto de Zavalía (1911–1981) • Hugo del Carril (1912–1989) • Narciso Ibáñez Menta (1912–2004) • Mario C. Lugones (1912–1970) • Julio Saraceni (1912–1998) • Leo Fleider (1913–1977) • Kurt Land (1913–1997) • Carlos Hugo Christensen (1914–1999) • Tulio Demicheli (1914–1992) • Román Viñoly Barreto (1914–1970) • Julio Porter (1916–1979) • Enrique Carreras (1925–1995) == See also ==