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The first Argentine blockbuster in 1915 - Nobleza Gaucha
Dedicated to Octavio Getino, author of ‘Cine Argentino’, ex-director of the National Institute for Cinema, for his continuing labour of love in the field of Argentine cinema, and without whom this article could not exist: truly an example of Gaucho nobility.
Filmmaking is often called the glamour industry, an apt name given that the etymology of glamour stems from the Old Scottish gramarye meaning ‘enchantment’ or ‘spell’. Few entertainments can boast of such magic, where image and poetry and music all come together harmoniously in a sustained suspension of reality. Indeed, there are few people on the planet who have not succumbed to its spell, and judging from the full movie theatres and quantities of students of cinematography, Argentines are no different. Nonetheless the film industry here is struggling despite the keen interest and abilities of local talent: directors, actors, and photographers. Given the high quality of the films produced in Argentina, proven by movies such as ‘El Secreto de sus Ojos’ (2009) or ‘La Historia Oficial’ (1985), both winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, one would think that filmmaking was an extremely profitable form of national expression. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Argentine filmmaking was originally developed and remains under a framework of neocolonial dependence, and local filmmakers confront major economic and cultural obstacles in order to develop their art form.
Buenos Aires: Fin du siecle
Near the end of the 19th century, there were two types of immigrants who arrived on Argentine shores: the great majority came from the underdeveloped areas of Italy and Spain and quickly adapted to the local creole population; and those immigrants from the industrially developed countries – France, England and Germany – who created a professional and economic elite, largely keeping to themselves.
Thus it is not surprising that commercial activity in Buenos Aires was largely controlled by foreigners, especially the English. Not only were trains, streetcars, gas provision, meat and grain production controlled by them, but there was also a huge influx of ideologues, bureaucrats and technocrats fleeing the demographic boom of the late Victorian and Edwardian ages. In 1875, the city registered 250,000 British citizens, but by 1913, there were over two million holding over 76% of industrial concerns and 81% of businesses. As George Canning, English diplomat and promoter of the first treaty between the newly founded Argentina and a European nation, once said: “We prefer the rights of Englishmen over the rights of man.”
In terms of ideology, this was the period in Argentina when socialism and positivism, with its emphasis on scientific method, took root in the minds of these elites who looked upon the dichotomy between life in the Americas and life in the mother England as a simple distinction between ‘barbarism’ and ‘civilisation’. In other words, there was a tendency to prefer imported goods, fashion and culture as expressions of civilisation over local ones, and although the concept of ‘colonisation’ probably was distasteful to these enlightened few, they accepted the hegemony of Europe over America and duly sought only to ‘improve’ what already was arguably an outpost of Britain. Local intellectuals apparently shared this sentiment, echoing former president Sarmiento’s words written half a century earlier: “Although the European invasion can only be seen as detrimental and ruinous for the nation, yet it is useful in terms of Civilisation and Commerce.”
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Eugenio Py at work in the late 1800s.
Given this predilection for European culture, it should be no surprise that moving pictures caught on fast here. On 28th July 1886 Lumiere’s ‘The Train’s Arrival’ became the first film to be shown in Argentine territory; scarcely a year later, French photographer Eugenio Py created the first film registered and processed in the country: ‘La Bandera Argentina’ (The Argentine Flag). The race was on. In the year 1900, the first cinema opened, the Salon Nacional, and the first drama was filmed locally in 1908: ‘El Fusilamiento de Dorrego’ (The shooting of Dorrego). Soon after, the first big production companies were founded and then in 1915, what is considered the first Argentine blockbuster: ‘Nobleza Gaucha’ (Gaucho Nobility). Not only did this film artistically cover aspects of Argentine reality, but it was also an economic success, encouraging production companies to continue their efforts in this area. Curiously, the economic success of Nobleza Gaucha is considered to be due to its appeal to the masses, an important distinction from successes in the years to follow.
Europe in Eclipse
World War I dimmed the excessive European influence over Argentina, although the die was cast, and the tendency to prefer everything European remains to this day. During the war years, when Argentina’s ties to Europe were loosened, the nation began to develop new forms of national and cultural expression, particularly movies, and these with a distinct social perspective.
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poster for 'El tango de la muerte
The first steps taken in Argentine filmmaking were made by José Agustín Ferreyra, one of the most noted directors of the period right after the Great War. Ferreyra believed that what Argentine filmmaking needed was “a little more love, zeal, and less carelessness and disdain, for ourselves and our own.” Considered neorealist before the term was even coined, he faced an ongoing battle with the owners of the theatres: “The movies were only shown on Mondays in the worst neighbourhoods where fewer people went. And the producers, if they paid at all, would only pay a pittance.” Nonetheless Ferreyra today is considered one of the fathers of Argentine filmmaking, a symbol of the desire to reflect the nation as it is.
Another important figure of this period was Fédérico Valle, a prominent developer of documentaries. He created his own newsreel company which produced over 500 editions up until the year 1930. He was forced, for economic reasons, to sell his archives to a comb factory which wanted to use the celluloid for its factory; the National Archives had repeatedly shown no interest in obtaining the collection. Another important name is Hector Quiroga who filmed the insurrection of 1919 and included the footage in his film, ‘Juan Sin Ropa’ (Juan Undressed), a movie which reflected a period in Argentine history when “the working man refused to continue kow-towing to an all-powerful lord, and began to strive to recover his dignity and other undeniable human aspirations”. The underlying themes to movies such as Nobleza Gaucha and Juan Sin Ropa touched several national nerves, and appealed to all audiences.
The Golden Era of Baireswood
As one of the principal producers of films, as well as of cinema’s raw materials – actors, technicians, photographers, and scriptwriters – in Latin America, Argentina became one of the main exporters of movies to other countries in the region. During the 1930s while Europe was still in a process of stabilisation after the Great War, and the US has fallen under the weight of Wall Street, Argentina grew rapidly, especially in those areas where it did not directly compete against the importation of British merchandise (a result of the Roca-Runcimann treaty, where Argentina agreed to export meat to Britain as well as hand over the control of its principal slaughterhouses and meat packing industries in exchange for British manufactured goods). This new industrial force also benefited the film industry, allowing Argentina to take the lead in Spanish-speaking cinematography.
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Libertad Lamarque (El Alma del Bandoneon, 1935)
This period also saw the transition from silent movies to ‘talkies’. Local production companies invested in equipment and infrastructure, and effects were soon forthcoming: ‘Munequitas Porteñas’ (Port Dolls, 1931) and ‘Tango’ were huge hits in the local market, but also started two divergent paths for Argentine filmmaking: the one, inspired in popular culture with the neorealistic tendency to soul-searching, and the other, of bourgeois nature, which in the words of the novelist and essayist, Estela Dos Santos “took the path of industry and commerce…with a system of tango melodrama that would make Libertad Lamarque into the feminine counterpart of Gardel, the greatest star and most sacred monster in the style of Hollywood.” Needless to say, the latter style, along the lines of Hollywood, was more successful.
The two main directors that emerge from this time period as advocates of a distinct Argentine film aesthetic were Mario Soffici and Leopoldo Torres Ríos. Soffici eloquently expressed his vocation to Argentine filmmaking thus: “Cinematography (here) must be renewed, from the inside out. We are misguided if we allow other mannerisms, forms or styles come to us and pass them off as our own. If we have nothing to say, it’s better to remain silent. A prudent silence is worth more than any showy or insincere manifestation.”
Despite the fact that during the 30s and 40s Argentine filmmaking was free market – that is, there was no government aid nor regulation of the industry – film production continued to grow undiminished leaving behind all other regional competition. Nonetheless the local film industry was playing a losing game by investing more in Hollywood style films; although business appeared to be good, this was due more to the problems other nations were undergoing, rather than any merit on behalf of the films produced. It would be only a question of time before the nations, innovators of film producing and technology, would begin to assert their hegemony again.
A Recipe for Bankruptcy
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Cine Cordoba (Photo: Daniel Greeco) which closed its doors in 1958
The real beneficiaries of the film industry in Argentina during this period were the distributors and the theatres. The producers, according to film historian Jose Agustin Mahieu “with suicidal improvisation, turned their films in with a fixed price, so the greatest gains made by eventual blockbusters stayed in the distributors’ hands… the industry’s axis was in the hands of numerous intermediaries that absorbed the greater part of the ticket profit. Little by little, the production companies were taken over by these intermediaries who would offer advances on future movies, for which they would then receive more advantageous conditions.” These intermediaries were, in fact, representatives of foreign production companies within the local system and had no incentive to foment the production of local films.
Other major changes in Argentine society of this time left their mark on the film industry. The move from a primarily agricultural nation to an industrial one with a corresponding move of workers from the countryside to the city occurred against the backdrop of World War II and the ideological conflicts incurred therein. According to intellectual, journalist, historian, editor, political activist Rodolfo Puiggros, this period was marked by “the shading and hiding of the internal causes that determine the contradictions of Argentine society, and the placing upfront of external causes, thus substituting the (traditional) struggle against imperialism and oligarchy for the fight for democracy against fascism.” In other words, the traditional struggle that had marked Argentine society since revolutionary times, the attempt to consolidate a unique identity versus the one imposed by the different waves of colonisation, was subsumed by the more global struggle determined by the contention between democracy and fascism.
The political powers of the time preferred to side with the anglophile ideologies, against the rising working class, that was immersed in the social upheaval concomitant to obtaining labour rights: the forming of unions, strikes, marches and the like. Curiously, the workers who thus fought for their rights were considered ‘barbaric’ and their claims were ‘illegitimate’ when faced by the now ‘democratic’ powers (i.e. oligarchy) that sided with the Allied forces. The great majority of the middle classes, anxious to rise on the social ladder, were quick to unite themselves to the ‘civilizing’ forces in power, and the movie production studios reflected this shift.
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Madame Bovary, 1947
Natural scenery was substituted for huge sets, which could more easily portray a Russian palace or Paris in the winter. Actors were cast if they showed predominately European features, and those of mixed race were cast in secondary or ‘evil’ roles. Language was also modified and the characteristic ‘voseo’ of Buenos Aires was altered to the civilised ‘tu’ of Castilian Spain. Local themes were also discarded and the great works of Western civilisation were portrayed: Shakespeare, Flaubert, Ibsen, Tolstoy. In short, filmmaking in Argentina became another tool for neocolonisation in which local filmmakers were the unwitting accomplices, forced by economic and social demands to produce movies which did not reflect the national reality. And inversely, the movies that were produced were not attractive to the middle class who could not identify with the values expressed therein.
In addition, post war attempts by the US to neutralize all competition in the region led to the limitation of the importation of celluloid, at the time considered to be of strategical value. Stymied at every turn, the industry asked for government intervention: in 1944, the first protectionist decree took effect and theatres throughout the nation were obligated to show Argentine films. In an article titled “The transnational influence of Argentine cinema”, authors Muraro and Cantor affirm that thanks to government protectionism and subsidizing “the film industry was able to produce 32 movies in 1946 and achieve its greatest output – 56 films – in 1950. In addition, the showing of foreign films diminished; only 131 were shown in 1950, still surpassing local production by a wide margin.” This period of protectionism was notable not for the quality of the films produced, but by its mediocrity; according to Getino, “[The movies] did not need to interest anybody…many times the investment was assured even before commercialisation began. There were so many advantages offered to the industry as well as the obligation to show national films that many invested in production studios.” Nonetheless hardly anybody risked capital in infrastructure – it was a time of fulfilling ‘quotas’ – and few directors risked altering the tried and proven formula provided by Hollywood. Hugo del Carril’s ‘Las aguas bajan turbias’ (Murkily Flows the River) is a notable departure from this formula, portraying unjust working conditions in the yerba mate plantations in northern Argentina, where workers were only released—downstream—once they had died.
The Entity
The transition period from the post war era was marked by a decrease in movie production in part due to the advent of the television, and in part due to the change in policy after the fall of Perón. Dos Santos maintained that “after Perón’s fall from power, the film industry was paralysed. Protectionism ceased to exist and cinemas were no longer forced to show Argentine films. There was a free-for-all to import foreign films which the public devoured enthusiastically.” In 1956, only 12 movies were filmed in Argentina, but 576 foreign films were shown in local cinemas.
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Poster for 'Los 40 cuartos'
Another obstacle to local film production was censorship which reared its ugly head in Argentina in 1963 as a way of controlling the ‘pornographic’ material in some independent films such as ‘Alias Gardelito’ (Alias Little Gardel, 1962) or ‘Los Cuarenta Cuartos’ (The Forty Rooms, 1963). This same year government subsidies for filmmakers were recalled as well as grants for short film producers. Suddenly filmmaking became an almost impossible labour.
Military control increased over the following years, usually in alliance with the Catholic Church, or what locals call the union between ‘the boots and the cassock’, and censorship was officially embodied in an organism called the ‘Ente’, or the Entity, formed by anonymous members of moralist groups only known as ‘Fathers’ or ‘Mothers’ or ‘League for Childhood Protection’. In a startling reverse during Perón’s third administration, the Entity was replaced by specialists in psychology, education, sociology, religion, film and culture as well as by representatives of the different labour unions. Over a period of 14 months between May 1973 and July 1974, the new Entity strived to present a project for a new law that would aid the sector including: 1) the release of all films banned for political/ideological motives, domestic and foreign alike; 2) an easing of censorship; 3) the improvement of the national film production; 4) the increase in national production; 5) the increase in public attendance; 6) a strengthening of the industry’s organisation and participative policies; 7) the elaboration of a legislative project to free and foment industrial and cultural values of cinematography. This movement, so heartening to the flagging producers, directors, and actors of the time, was not to last; the military coup d’êtat of 1976 saw to that.
Under the Military Junta
The effects that the coup had on all cultural life in Argentina have been widely documented; the film industry is no exception. Thus, the newly conceived project for legislation was almost immediately aborted, and all activities of incipient labour unions in the film sector abruptly ceased. Censorship began again, this time under the Entity’s new director, Miguel P. Tato; movies that had been banned and then released, were banned once again. Any reason was sufficient: sexual content, religious content, as well as a wide range of ideological content. Fewer movies were produced and those that were produced were of a slapstick variety, of little cultural value. Many directors, old and young, fled the country or were assassinated or disappeared; production companies folded; movie theatres closed. In short, Getino describes the situation thus: “the people’s access to films was banned, and in a clear political maneuver, their attention was turned to television broadcasting which was controlled entirely by the intelligence services, the Army’s psychological forces, and by the puppets of cultural policy imposed from 1976 on.”
This closing of the theatres corresponded with the denial of political, economic, social and cultural rights, which accordingly ceased to reflect the national experience altogether. While before the predilection for a foreign aesthetic had been a matter of choice, after the military coup, Argentina and Argentines practically disappeared from the silver screen. It is fitting, a somewhat tacit admittance of guilt, that the military repressors responsible for the cessation of all these rights did not document their deeds, nor allow their moment in history to be immortalized in movies. The efforts to ‘civilise’ the nation have ended up in ‘barbarism’; thus Argentina is a place where, according to Getino, “history is dominated by the conflict of ‘autonomous development’ (i.e. liberation) versus the ‘development of underdevelopment’ (i.e. dependence), with its most dramatic confrontations determined in the fields of culture and cinematography.”
Modern Times
The Argentine filmmaking industry is still reeling from the consequences of the dictatorship and the exacerbated neo-liberal policies that characterised the democratic governments immediately following, although there are now signs that it is recovering. The latest (2009) revision to the National Cinema Law requires that local movie theatres show at least one Argentine film per quarter, a requirement that is barely met, not because of a lack of movies produced here but by lacklustre advertising and ill-conceived commercial practices in general. In Argentina, cinemas are more likely to show Hollywood fare because people eat more popcorn, and the concession stands are where the real money is made. This recalls Eddie Izzard’s take on US vs. English films; Argentine filmmaking must have more in common with English productions than is commonly thought.
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Belgrano Cineplex showing modern films (Photo: Federico Reiven)
On the other hand, mainstream distributors from the US force a package deal on Argentine theatres interested in showing a particular blockbuster; they must take another three not so successful films in order to receive the hit one.
Ultimately, filmmaking is a business like any other according to the present value system. Ability and talent take second place to money, and the efforts to create an authentically national expression using film as media has been affected by the global distributing behemoth which is Hollywood. Even India, which produces more movies per year than any country in the world cannot compete with the US for distribution.
The Human Rights Film Festival
As Argentina hosts the 13th annual Human Rights Film Festival this year, we would do well to remember that democracy itself is based upon one of the most important and basic human rights: the right of free speech and expression. Filmmaking is and always has been an example of the exercise of this right. As can be seen by the history of cinema in Argentina, filmmakers here have been set upon by an inordinate amount of threats to their ability and opportunity to express themselves freely whether the obstacles take the form of neo-colonial tendencies, imperialistic blackmail, fascist repression, neo-liberal market favouritism, or just plain bad luck. Yet they have persisted in their labour, with what can only be termed as ‘gaucho nobility’. Argentine filmmakers have something to say; the least we can do is pay attention.
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