Immigrant Cosmopolitanism: The Political Culture of Argentine Early Sound Cinema of the 1930s

Abstract

This article examines the social and urban history of early sound cinema in Argentina in the 1930s. It critically analyzes film culture and its relationship to the shaping of an early conceptual construction of an Argentine cinema of resistance. The authors document the ways that protagonists of national film within the industry crafted a film culture against the pressures of nationalist reformers. As nationalists on the right hoped to use cinema as a tool of national identity construction and moral education, this early sound cinema culture constructed narratives of industrial professionalization, cosmopolitan audiences, and political critique. This article argues that film politics of this period extended beyond the big screen to intersect with local and national politics of the urban and primarily immigrant working class. Situating this class within the landscape of urban life, this cinema forged a critical bridge between immigrant communities and the city that constituted a form of cultural resistance to fascist tendencies within the state. Early sound cinema asserted a notion of ‘immigrant cosmopolitanism’ onto the political landscape of urban life in Buenos Aires.