Public Spectacles of Violence. Sensational Cinema and Journalismin Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski

Abstract

Reviewed by: Public Spectacles of Violence. Sensational Cinema and Journalismin Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski Odile Cisneros Navitski, Rielle. Public Spectacles of Violence. Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil. Duke UP, 2017. 325 pp. This new study of early sensational cinema and journalism begins with an eye-catching statement: "Films that restaged public spectacles of real-life violence became the first popular successes of both Mexican and Brazilian cinema" (1). Violence, priority, and mass success thus characterize this understudied corpus of cinema and journalism in Mexico and Brazil and drive its analysis, even as some of the artifacts in question have barely survived the test of time, both metaphorically and literally. By examining largely forgotten films and lost ones reconstructed from journalistic narratives and other extant texts, Rielle Navitski attempts to show how "the sensational mode is uniquely revealing of the transformation of quotidian experience and public life" in contexts where "modernization … often accentuated profound social divides" (2). More specifically, Navitski links the thematics of violence to modernity, arguing that "the sensational visual culture of early twentieth-century Mexico and Brazil voiced profound desires for economic and technological development and an implicit acceptance of modernization's costs" (12). The book is organized geographically and chronologically, devoting two chapters to the case of Mexico and three to the case of Brazil. Besides providing [End Page 798] some historical and economic background, the introduction lays out the study's theoretical and methodological groundwork. The methodology includes an articulation of fictional and non-fictional conventions, a recuperation of the ephemeral artifacts of popular visual culture (as opposed to precious studies of "high" culture), and an intermedial approach that reads these early sensational cinemas "through their intertexts in print culture and popular entertainment, examining local horizons of film reception and production alongside region-wide affinities and international exchanges" (9). Covering both the Porfirian as well as revolutionary periods in Mexican history, the first chapter explores how images of crime, punishment and conflict simultaneously portray state control and its crisis. Early illustrated journalism and non-fiction films gave way to adaptations of true stories, such as the crime serial El automóvil gris (Enrique Rosas, 1919), which profited from public violence as popular entertainment, curiously linking such criminal activity to Mexico's emergence within cosmopolitan modernity. The post-revolutionary period discussed in chapter two is characterized by adventure films with a nationalist cultural agenda. Movies such as El tren fantasma (1926) and El puño de hierro (1927) were received by the popular press with both enthusiasm for their violent subject matter as well as skepticism prompted by their perceived cultural dependence on Hollywood. In the case of Brazil, Navitski argues in chapter three that the fast-growing cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo became the scenarios of violent spectacles, in word and in deed. Real-life theft, murders, and crimes of passion in the press inspired sensationalist films, literary, and stage adaptations rife with drama and moral messages. Among the films studied in this chapter are Os estranguladores (The Stranglers, 1908), documenting a famous murder case known as the Crime of Carioca Street, and the fictionalization of robbery aboard a steamship, O caso dos caixotes (The Case of the Strongboxes, 1912). Chapter four looks more closely at the case of imported serial films which held wide and popular appeal in Rio de Janeiro, prompting both locally-themed films and novelizations. Productions highlighted, and were appreciated for, their successful stunts and cinematic effects. Exploring the intersection of national and foreign as well as print and film media, this chapter tackles the cross-medial form of the cinematic serial novel, a national tradition of serial literature that interacted with imported crime and adventure serials. Examining the production, exhibition, and journalistic reception of sensational melodramas in regions outside the two large urban centres of Brazil, chapter five addresses both the geographic and economic disparities in the country. The productions employed adventure melodrama conventions while attempting to make use of local color by shooting on location and taking advantage of actors' and cinematographers' skills. Violence does not play as fundamental a role in this chapter, but...