Approaching the (Trans)National in Criticism of Early Latin American Sound Film

Abstract

I n the July 1931 issue of Mensajero Paramount (Paramount Messenger), an in-house publication dedicated to the interests of Spanishspeaking film exhibitors, an editorial note remarks that “Spanishspeaking audiences now have a spectacle in which they not only find their language, but something as essential in order for one to be able to speak properly of a Latin American and Spanish cinema: the spirit, the feeling, the Latin American and Spanish psychology.” Paradoxically, the mouthpiece of a major studio contends it is able to fulfill its Spanish-speaking markets’ desires for talkies that both literally and figuratively speak to and for local spectators. Though Hollywood would continue to dominate these markets, creative entrepreneurs in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico began building film industries in the 1930s in the shadow of the giant to the north. The contradictions of this note in Mensajero Paramount, as well as the rise of these domestic film industries, express tensions between two fundamental concepts marking criticism of the early sound period in Latin America historically and through to today: national cinema(s) and transnationalism. In this commentary, I trace the ways in which recent critical studies approximate national and transnational features of Latin American cinema(s) of the early sound period (1931–1943). In so doing, I also