Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: A Short History of Film Melodrama in Latin America 1 Darlene J. Sadlier 1. Melodrama of the Spirited Woman: Aventurera 19 Gilberto Perez 2. Melodrama and the Emergence of Venezuelan Cinema 33 Luisela Alvaray 3. The Building of a Nation: La guerra gaucha as Historical Melodrama 50 Paula Félix-Didier and Andrés Levinson 4. Women as Civilizers in 1940s Brazilian Cinema: Between Passion and the Nation 64 Cid Vasconcelos 5. The Humiliation of the Father: Melodrama and Cinema Novo’s Critique of Conservative Modernization 77 Ismail Xavier 6. Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Cinema de lágrimas 96 Darlene J. Sadlier 7. Luis Alcoriza; or, A Certain Antimelodramatic Tendency in Mexican Cinema 110 Marvin D’Lugo 8. Weeping Reality: Melodramatic Imagination in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary 130 Mariana Baltar 9. Televisual Melodrama in an Era of Transnational Migration: Exporting the Folkloric Nation, Harvesting the Melancholic-Sublime 139 Catherine L. Benamou Contributors 173 Index of Names and Titles 175 ...