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Reviewed by:
  • Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment
  • Victoria Ruétalo
Sadlier, Darlene, ed. and intro. Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2009. 183 pp.

Melodrama has a long and rich history in Latin America. Its height came during the industrial period known as the Golden Age (1930s–50s), a time when in the larger industries (mostly Mexico and Argentina, and to a lesser degree Brazil) cinema attracted huge audiences nationally and across the region with its affective mode. This anthology tackles the complex history of melodrama in Latin America. Generally, the essays are of insightful critical value and offer a significant introspective on different aspects of melodrama. In particular they establish valuable connections between cinema’s past and present, finding melodrama or the “melodramatic imagination” in everything from the New Latin American cinema to documentaries and telenovelas in today’s global market.

There seems to be a longing for the melodramas of the Golden Age cinemas yet very little actually covers this period of film production. For instance, Darlene Sadlier’s chapter “Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Cinema de lágrimas” is a case in point. She chooses to exemplify the importance of the genre through the work of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, one of the leaders of the Cinema Novo movement. In 1994, the BFI selected dos Santos to make a film commemorating the 100 years of cinema. Given such a daunting task, as Sadlier rightly points out, with a very diverse region and 100 years of filmmaking to take into account, Latin America’s only representative opts to make a fiction film that documents the Golden Age of Mexican melodrama. His return to this period and genre confirms melodrama’s impact on the region’s cinematic history in general and on dos Santos’s work in particular. Sadlier’s analysis adeptly interweaves both of these arguments. But it also shows a need to somehow validate melodrama as she talks about it through dos Santos, one of the great auteurs highly associated with the New Latin American cinema, the more respected period of film production.

Nevertheless, the anthology does cover the Golden Age period melodramas in three of the essays, one for each of the most important industries. Gilberto Perez’s “Melodrama of the Spirited Woman Averturera” examines the most cited melodrama in Mexico, Alberto Gout’s Aventurera (1948). He provides a close reading of the film but disappointingly ignores the rich scholarship that does exist about this film and other cabareteras. However, Paula Félix-Didier and Andrés Levinson provide a perceptive reading about a less discussed film. The authors contend with the few works that have studied La guerra gaucha (1942) to argue that the film, which like nineteenth-century writings about the nation, uses melodrama to comment on independence in keeping with what was happening at the time of its production, calling attention and defending Argentine cultural identity at a time when it was being threatened by the foreign. Cid Vasconcelos focuses on the Estado Novo period in Brazil. Argila (1940), Aves sem ninho (1939), and Romance proibido (1944) all promote “woman as civilizers” advancing new ideas about work, education and social relationships that fit into the state’s role for women and speak about the new woman as a small-scale version of the great leader (Getúlio Vargas), exalting national values. [End Page 380]

Luisela Alvaray’s astute contribution summarizes the role that melodrama has had in the creation of the Venezuelan film industry, a more marginal example. She describes the migratory forces and their impact in the development of melodrama in Venezuela, which helped to define the direction of national cinema. While she starts in the classic period with the Mexican and Argentine co-productions, she goes on to show how melodrama has endured in the more recent works by national auteur Román Chalbaud and others.

There are two essays that look at the 1960s and 1970s and their ironic use of melodrama. Ismail Xavier in, “The Humiliation of the Father: Melodrama and Cinema Novo’s Critique of Conservative Modernization,” studies Arnaldo Jabor’s Toda nudez será castigada (1972) and O casamento (1975...

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