Illuminating the Black Film: The Weimar Origins of the Argentine Policial , the Curious Case of ‘El Metteur’ James Bauer and Crime as Transnational Signifier

Abstract

Literary narratives of crime and detective work were enjoyed by wide audiences attracted to the popular policial fiction in serial publications in South America throughout the 1930s. Crime films, however, arrive quite late in with most Argentine studios producing their first policial films around the year 1940. Drawing inspiration from Weimar and French sources—and often produced by filmmakers-in-exile escaping the rise of fascism in Europe—the first policials blended the techniques honed by veterans of the European studio systems in Spain, France, and Germany with the established genre and stylistic conventions of musical and romantic comedy that attracted audiences to local Argentine productions. This chapter focuses on German-born director James Bauer’s Explosivo 008, a mashup of Weimar aesthetics and local Argentine musical comedy and science fiction, as a kaleidoscopic production that reveals the global cultural influences entering the visual culture of Argentina through film as foreign filmmakers settled in Buenos Aires and collaborated with local studios. This film offers a picture of the entangled strands of national cultures in transition during a time of war and occupation and resulting in a cinematic transnationalism that would enrich the subsequent development of policial films and fiction in Argentina.