Melodrama at the Margins: Poverty, Politics, and Profits in ‘Golden Age’ Venezuelan Cinema

Abstract

Tracing the 'Golden Age' collaborations between Mexican, Argentine, and Venezuelan film studios, this article analyses La Balandra Isabel llego esta tarde (1949) and Cain adolescente (1959) as the fruits of early efforts to establish a film industry in Caracas. Bookending the 1948–58 military dictatorship, each film mediates local anxieties surrounding urbanization within the framework of melodrama that was predominant in 1940s Latin American cinema. Focusing on the films' distinct mediations of intersections between race, class, and gender, I argue that they negotiate the rise of the popular according to the conflicting ideologies that shaped their production in Venezuela.