Film Review: Music,Technique,and Transnationality: The Rodríguez Brothers and Luis José Moglia Barth

A New Audible Cinema

The advent of new equipment that allowed the addition of sound to the filmstrip had a widespread impact on cinema. From the first attempts at synchronization using recorded discs to the optical recording of sound (which allowed the integration of sound and images), cinema was transformed by the incorporation of new narratives, conventions, and aesthetics. The revolution that took place in Latin American cinema as a result of these technological changes increased competition in the Latin American market. It also led to experimentation with film language, imbued by sound with yet another element that brought cinema closer to resembling everyday life.

Aside from being revolutionary in this sense, the technological advances had industrial implications, as both Paulo Antonio Paranagua (1985) and Rick Altman (1985) have observed. The distribution of film to different parts of the world had to confront the language problem at a time when subtitles and dubbing were not very popular with audiences. ¹ Because of this, Hollywood, which had always dominated Latin American screens, began making Spanish-language versions of films it wanted to promote in order not to lose this substantial market. This practice took place between 1928 and 1939, with levels of production that declined over time and as the sound film industries of Latin America and the United States became consolidated. Many of these films were shot at night using the sets of the original versions and the original English screenplays with Spanish-speaking actors. The Mexican actress Lupe Velez is a rare case whose established stardom allowed her to appear in both the English and the Spanish versions of films such as East Is West (Monta Bell, 1930). ² Lupita Tovar, who would later star in Santa, became popular in Hollywood through the Spanish-language version of Dracula (George Melford, 1931), which also featured the Spanish actor Carlos Villarías as the count and the Argentine Barry Norton playing Juan Harker. ³ The transnational actor José Bohr (who worked in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico) was another Latino star who started a career in Hollywood. Both he and the Mexican actor José Mojica enjoyed notoriety in the United States beyond the Spanish-language versions.

The variety of Spanish-language nationalities that appeared in these films (mainly Mexican, Cuban, Spanish, Argentine, and Chilean) resulted in a collision of accents that blurred the national identities of those involved in them. Thus Hollywood’s Spanish-language talkies, the result of the unique technological and industrial necessities of the moment, represent a significant example of transnationalism. ⁴ Despite the use of a common language, the Babel of accents with Hollywood as a focus neutralized the particularities in pursuit of this crossing of nationalities. As Jarvinen (2012) establishes, this happened to such an extent that the actors, writers, and musicians who entered the U.S. industry or the market in general were referred to as “Spanish” or “Spanish-speaking.” This phenomenon emerged from commercial strategies that took advantage of the arrival of sound to establish the circulation of artists of various origins, who gained recognition in Hollywood and throughout Latin America where these films were distributed.

While the implementation of this Spanish-language cinema fulfilled Hollywood’s intention to expand internationally, it undermined the emerging Latin American industry by drawing its stars to Hollywood (Peredo Castro, 2011). However, as the popularity of these productions declined—probably because of their poor quality, since they were filmed very quickly and their actors lacked star appeal—many of these Latin American artists and technicians left Los Angeles and their dreams of Hollywood stardom behind. This meant the decline of some careers and their rebirth in their native countries, taking advantage of the training with which they had been provided during their time in that city. Mexican artists had the most potential in this regard, given their geographical proximity to Hollywood. With the rise of fascism and the onset of World War II, this advantage could also be attributed to the ideological differences between Hollywood and Mexican cinema’s primary rival, Argentina, whose film industry was always suspected of having fascist sympathies (Peredo Castro, 2011). Suspicion was concentrated on some productions of the Mentasti brothers (the owners of the most important studio of that time, Argentina Sono Films) in support of the Axis (their Pan-American News) and on their connections with Film Reich, an enterprise dedicated to the distribution of German films. All the same, as Peredo Castro points out, this is not sufficient to consider the whole Argentine industry fascist. A further advantage for Mexican artists was Hollywood’s collaboration in the development of Mexico’s industrial infrastructure. For example, Churubusco Studios was built with the help of RKO Pictures in order to produce Spanish-language films at a lower cost (Alecerreca, 2002). Beyond the prominence of Mexico in Hollywood, the participation of the Argentine tango singer Carlos Gardel in several international productions during the 1930s is noteworthy. These movies capitalized on his popularity among Spanish-speaking audiences and, in a way, promoted a particular imaginary of Argentine culture. ⁵

The sound revolution also had implications for the exhibitors, as theaters had to update their equipment and amenities to adapt to the new form of cinema. The arrival of sound on film prompted major transformations in the industry that allowed it to extend its reach beyond national borders. Latin American cinema has been transnational since its very early stages. In terms of technology, narrative structures, and the international careers of its artists, it was unable to break its dependence on Hollywood, although the national industries did achieve regular production and incorporate some autochthonous elements. National folklore was transformed into what Mette Hjort (2011) calls opportunistic transnationalism—the creation of interconnections beyond national borders for the purpose of expanding international markets. Paradoxically, this representational strategy also ended up shaping exotic Latin American stereotypes in Hollywood films as the U.S. industry worked to attract Latin American audiences.

Innovations for a Border-Crossing National Cinema

For Mexican technicians and filmmakers, September 15, 1929, was a milestone: it marked the first public demonstration in the United States (in Los Angeles) of the equipment developed by the brothers Joselito and Roberto Rodríguez. ⁶ Their system was used in 1931 to add sound to the Spanish-language production Sangre mexicana (Ernesto A. Romero), filmed in Hollywood. The Mexican filmmaker Miguel Contreras Torres did something similar the same year with his short film El águila y el nopal, which employed the Vitaphone system. ⁷ This same sound recording system was used in Mexico’s first sound production: the melodrama Más fuerte que el deber (Raphael J. Sevilla, 1930). This and other films (Dios y la ley, Guillermo Calles, 1929; Soñadores de la gloria, Miguel Contreras Torres, 1930) demonstrate these directors’ tendency to work transnationally. The Rodríguez brothers became a point of reference for this type of experiment, especially during their stay in Los Angeles. The inventions they conceived there were more refined than those of U.S. technicians and gave a fundamentally transnational character to the beginning of sound cinema in Mexico. The Rodríguez brothers created a system known as “noise reduction,” but it was the development of sound-on-film, an improvement over the sound-on-disc processes that had been used until that point in the States, that revolutionized technology during those early years. Although the U.S. inventor Lee de Forest had already invented Phonofilm (a system that allowed the recording of sound on film), Joselito Rodríguez created a system with greater precision a few years later. ⁸ It represented an improvement particularly in terms of muffling projector noise in addition to being adaptable to all types of cameras and easily transportable.

In Argentina, the earliest relevant examples of sound cinema can be found between 1929 and 1932, which Di Núbila (1998) calls an incubation period. ⁹ Mosaico criollo (Eleuterio Iribarren, 1929), a one-reel musical revue, marked an advance in this respect. A Bell & Howell camera with an excessively noisy motor forced technicians to find ways to muffle its noise in order to register sound properly. Although their search for a solution was productive, it came at the cost of an immobilized camera. The sound was recorded on synchronized discs from Francisco Chiavarra and Alfredo Murúa’s Sociedad Impresora de Discos Electrofónicos (SIDE). This was a system similar to Vitaphone invented in Argentina. The film score featured popular musical genres such as malambo and tango, using sound to promote national identity. Eduardo Morera used the Phonofilm sound system in some 15 short films in Buenos Aires in 1930 ¹⁰ in which Carlos Gardel and other well-known tango composers contributed their songs and acted in brief scenes. ¹¹ The presence of a Buenos Aires musical icon in movies had great promotional and propaganda value at the international level for Argentine cinema. In Rosas de otoño Gardel, looking straight into the camera, declares: “I am ready to defend our language, our customs, and our songs with the help of Argentine sound films.” Undeniably alluding to sound films as means of promotion, his interlocutor, the musician Francisco Canaro, responds: “I will accompany you with my orchestra, and I will do everything in my power so that our songs continue to be a worldwide triumph.” Another foundational sound film was Muñequitas porteñas (José Agustín Ferreyra, 1931), the first feature-length Argentine film to use Vitaphone records. ¹² This system was also used in two less-well-known films: La vía de oro (Edmo Cominetti, 1931) and La barra del taponazo Alejandro del Conte, 1932). ¹³ However, it was not until ¡Tango! (Argentina Sono Film’s first production) ¹⁴ and the Lumiton studios productions, ¹⁵ especially Los tres berretines (Enrique Susini, 1933), ¹⁶ which opened 22 days later, ¹⁷ that optical sound was used. Moglia Barth had already directed movies such as Puños, charleston y besos (1927), and El 90 (1928), when he decided to experiment with sound. The result was the two-part Consejo de tango (1932), ¹⁸ the formation of his production company, and the industrialization of Argentine cinema, which began at this point to be competitive internationally.

As these examples suggest, the early days of sound cinema in Mexico and Argentina were characterized by nationalism. This nationalism was motivated by their rivalry for the emerging Latin American film market, which had its foundations in the industrialization and internationalization modeled by Hollywood. ¹⁹ These two industries were also stamped by the technological developments and opportunities for visibility offered by cinema produced in Los Angeles. Their approach to foreign influence as they tried to create a national industry did not preclude the participation of their artists in U.S. films. Rather, this practice helped to promote these personalities internationally and allowed them to contribute to the cultural and technological enrichment of their national industries (as reflected in the work of the Rodríguez brothers and the international reception of Gardel’s music). Although Mexico and Argentina shared the triangulation of Los Angeles as a central site of entertainment, technology, and aesthetic experiments, they differed because of their geographical locations. While Mexicans collectively opted to enter their neighboring country, Argentine cineastes worked more at a distance from it for decades.

Santa and ¡Tango!

Apart from being the first Mexican and Argentine all-talking motion pictures, Santa and ¡Tango! are noteworthy because of the particular ways in which they used music for both narrative development and commercial purposes. The music and lyrics of the songs served as a point of departure for the content of the films, a tradition that would continue with the Mexican cabaret melodramas and Argentine tango melodramas. A comparative examination of these films demonstrates the transnational linkages and generic conventions that sustained each national cinema at its inception and shows that they operated differently.

Santa, a remake of the 1918 silent film by Luis G. Peredo based on Federico Gamboa’s homonymous 1903 novel, included a score by Agustín Lara, who wrote the title song, “Santa.” ²⁰ The character of Santa, a woman who after many disappointments and tears becomes a prostitute, developed into a prototype for Mexican and Latin American melodramas featuring suffering young women engulfed in an underworld of brothels and slums. In contrast to those of Hollywood musicals, the songs and dance numbers in Mexican movies made after Santa were not just components of a cinematic spectacle but the essence of the filmic text. “Songs not only become the invisible characters of many films but also drive the dramatic, usually tragic, story” (Lozoya, 2006: 41). In Santa, however, in contrast to ¡Tango!, the musical numbers were not so conceived. Lara’s song occurs in a scene that is incorporated into the dramatic conflict and thereafter becomes only a musical motif that accompanies the melodramatic plot.

Santa’s cast and crew included a number of Latin Americans who had worked in the U.S. film industry. Most notably, it featured the Mexican actress Lupita Tovar in her first film in her native country after having been promoted as a Latin star in Hollywood. The film’s director, Antonio Moreno, had also been a popular Latin lover in silent-era Hollywood. The Cuban actor Juan José Martínez Casado played a secondary role (that of a Spanish bullfighter), and the Canadian cinematographer Alex Philips was in charge of the photography. In spite of being a foundational example of Mexican sound cinema and of the brothel melodrama subgenre that developed immediately afterwards, Santa is, because of the backgrounds of those involved in it, a clear example of the transnational circulation of talent, which would continue to grow in the emerging Latin American film industry. The inclusion of several scenes that feature songs and dances from Spain and the United States also attests to this logic.

The film also introduced features such as urban landscapes, nightlife, the infrastructure of medical science (presented as ineffective), and the sexualized female body that diverged from the traditional social order of the time, while still functioning as a guide for audiences’ moral behavior (Cabañas Osorio, 2014). These elements were undoubtedly linked to the influential role of the United States on an ideological level and as a commercial benefactor.

¡Tango!, in contrast, took advantage of the popularity of the musical genre referenced in the title and featured numerous renowned musical figures throughout its dramatic plot, including Azucena Maizani, Juan Carlos Bazán, Tita Merello, Juan de Dios Filiberto, and Libertad Lamarque. Its narrative structure resembled a musical revue and captivated audiences. ²¹ In addition, it included several artists who would soon be part of the Argentine classic-industrial cinema star system, including Pepe Arias and Luis Sandrini. ²² These two aspects of the film link it to the industrial and cultural patterns of Hollywood, which had a great influence until the Latin American embrace of cinematic modernism in the postwar era. ¡Tango! was also conceived as part of a commercial strategy that included the release of two other Moglia Barth films (Dancing, 1933, and Riachuelo, 1934), forming a kind of trilogy geared toward popular success. This orientation was typical of Argentina Sono Film as a producer of multiple Argentine and Latin American box-office hits. Despite the internationalization of Argentine cinema that generated interest in the film, the international circulation of talent differed from the Mexican case and its close relationship with Hollywood. In ¡Tango! the talent came primarily from the world of national theater and in some cases achieved international popularity only after appearing in national cinema. ²³

The movie demonstrates the bond between music and new audiences; even before the opening credits, we see an image of the singer Azucena Maizani in profile as a tango plays. An urban background related to Buenos Aires (probably the legendary Corrientes Street) is then immediately superimposed, followed by a succession of images that evoke urban landmarks. In fact, this first song also links the geography of Buenos Aires to the tango. Thus, thanks to the technological novelty of sound, music is used to establish a national identity that can transcend borders, as we see when the protagonists travel to Paris. After the opening credits, as in silent movies, an intertitle with poetic content emerges while Maizani’s voice sings the song’s last verses. This creates simultaneity (innovative for the time) in that the written words are different from those sung, forcing viewers to split their attention. Throughout its stream of songs, the movie highlights autochthonous elements such as mate, bailongo, recognizable types of men and women from Buenos Aires, working-class neighborhoods, tango orchestras, and the comedic style typical of the sainete theatrical genre. This is a response to the competition alluded to by Matthew B. Karush (2013: 19) between the culture of the Argentine film industry and that of Hollywood, which led the former to incorporate into its films the value of “national authenticity”—something that the latter could not offer. Tango and cinema in this period “reached a significant portion of the market, combining the signifiers of modernity—the dance rhythms, the orchestration and instrumentation inspired by jazz, and the editing techniques of Hollywood—with marks of authenticity such as lunfardo [Buenos Aires slang], the milonguitas [a dance form from the Rio de la Plata region], popular melodrama, and nationally recognized settings” (213). Produced with an Argentine cast and crew, it maintains a narrative structure typical of Hollywood musical revues and even suggests certain similarities to the U.S. films starring Gardel (especially when Alberto Gómez’s character sings while holding a guitar). ²⁴

In cinemas around the world, the arrival of sound introduced musical revues in which famous theater and radio artists paraded en masse across movie screens. There were celebrities like Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, who filmed operettas in the United States under the direction of Ernst Lubitsch, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who danced in multiple RKO productions. With this kind of movie Hollywood cinema became increasingly popular, delighting audiences with its glamour and fantasy. In some films the narrative trajectory is interspersed with musical numbers that seem to be the true motivation behind these productions, producing a pattern for musicals around the world. This trend reflects the novelty of synchronized sound, which, as Slowik (2014) establishes, led filmmakers to take advantage of experimentation with it through the continuous use of music ²⁵ and some striking sound effects. The use of Latin American rhythms in U.S. cinema, especially in the film Flying Down to Rio (Thornton Freeland, 1933), which imported the Mexican actress Dolores del Río, explodes the attractiveness of Brazilian music with an hybridized look. In the following years, in Hollywood, Latino artists cast in an exotic light became celebrities, as was the case of the Portuguese actress Carmen Miranda, who popularized tropical rhythms in her Fox films wearing hats adorned with fruit. Similarly, this explosion of music and dance had successors in Latin America, where stereotypes persisted in the extravagant costuming of the rumberas (Ninón Sevilla, María Antonieta Pons, and Amalia Aguilar, among others). The recording industry and radio also introduced cultural changes, allowing the integration of Cuba and Mexico by making Caribbean celebrities popular among Mexican audiences (Amiot-Guillouet, 2015). Therefore, although there is a strong national imprint, the influence of Hollywood can be seen in this first Argentine sound film, which follows the same commercial model, music linked to the drama (usually containing a failing love story) and the appeal of singing stars.

Santa and ¡Tango! aimed to revamp Mexican and Argentine cinema, respectively, through a level of development that had not been reached in previous sound experiments. Both works were foundational to the industrialization of sound film in their respective national cinemas and had dramatic elements in their narratives. Santa opened the way for a succession of productions that centered on a young woman falling into disgrace and driven into prostitution. In Argentina, in contrast, musical revues opened the way for the tango melodrama, which is barely perceptible in Moglia Barth’s film.

Despite their differences, the road on which these films embarked was paved by the consolidation of the respective industries, which gave way to competition between the two nations, whose dominance would alternate during the classic-industrial period. According to Jarvinen (2012), this kind of movie, marked by the attractiveness of national music, threatened the commercial supremacy of Hollywood, which led this industry to pursue associations such as the production of Spanish talkies and the recruitment of Latino stars and coproductions. In this sense, the music, the stories of failed romances, and the clubs (either brothels or show clubs) that appear in these films were the hooks used to attract both national and international audiences.

Conclusions

The early years of sound cinema in Latin America and, particularly, the experiences in Mexico and Argentina (the two main film industries in the region) were substantially connected with the technological innovations and cultural influence of Hollywood cinema. Los Angeles became a platform for the success of Latino artists, who in turn were used to extend the power of the U.S. industry in Latin America. Although there was no direct connection between Mexican and Argentine cinema during the period examined here, it was the tango that allowed actors like Libertad Lamarque, after the popularity of films like Ayúdame a vivir (José Agustín Ferreyra, 1936), to succeed in Mexico and remain there. Through music, the two nations not only competed for industrial consolidation in Latin America but also strengthened the ties between them. Melodrama, which originally meant tragedy accompanied by music, has been the most productive genre in both countries, defining spaces and characters whose misfortunes are emphasized their songs. In the midst of experiments, competition, and transnational exchanges between them as well as with the United States (with Los Angeles as its cinematic epicenter), boleros and tangos strengthened ties in pursuit of the consolidation of a film industry in Latin America.