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Abstract
Much like the majority of Argentine films produced during the 1930s, Los tres berretines aims to represent Buenos Aires as a modern metropolis. Set in the cosmopolitan capital, the film represents the social life of the rising middle class, its target market. This paper examines how the directorial team assembles place in Los tres berretines and how these places represent a particular spatial experience and perception of Buenos Aires. In order to approximate these aims, Guiliana Bruno's notion of siteseeing is applied to the film. Bruno argues that the experience of filmic space is not exclusively visual: it is felt through textures of space that the viewer experiences with all of their senses. In CitationLos tres berretines, it is proposed that the directorial team Equipo Lumiton leads the viewer on a siteseeing tour that begins in the streets of Buenos Aires in the title sequence, then moving on the sites of three important facets of the Argentine social imaginary of the 1930s – movies, soccer and tango. Assembling these sites through diverse narrative techniques (archetypes, metonymy, mise-en-scène, montage, etc.), Equipo Lumiton leads the viewer through spaces of everyday porteño life, guiding them both on a siteseeing tour of Buenos Aires and him or herself.
Notes
1. Los tres berretines was directed by a directorial team, Equipo Lumiton, which most probably consisted of John Alton, Lazlo Kisch, Cesar José Guerrico, Enrique Susini, and Luis Romero Carranza. It is important to note that although the original US release title of the film was The Three Amateurs, it is more appropriately translated as The Three Whims. The film's three whims are cinema, soccer and tango.
2. Porteño is the adjective used to describe that which is from Buenos Aires.
3. This camera was similar to later optical sound cameras, but could only film for short durations, usually between three and four minutes (España Citation2000, p. 28).
4. Before Argentina Sono Film and Lumiton's forays into optical sound, there were other less-successful attempts at sound film. The Argentina Sono Film produced CitationMuñequitas porteñas (José Agustín Ferreyra 1931), which used Vitaphone synchronized discs, is considered by some to be the first Argentine sound film. However, these films are rife with lapses in synchronization and extremely poor sound quality, making it difficult to claim that they are fully sound films.
5. In his article ‘Argentine Film from Sound to the Sixties’, Jorge CitationCouselo (1988) explains that:
Early sound cinema in Argentina was fed by the short farce, theatrical reviews, tangos, and the expanding radio network (particularly radio theatre). In contrast to the originality of the late silent film, which had not played safe by using established performers, the first days of sound were peopled by successes from other media. (p. 28)
6. A series of transformations, the viewer's haptical experience of filmic space calls into mind both Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the rhizome and the emphasis on translations and transductions in Actor-Network Theory, especially the work of Bruno Latour.
7. ‘El cine y las costumbres’ is presented as a conversation between an unknown woman and Arlt. It begins:
Señora: Usted, Arlt, ¿va al cine? [You, Arlt, do you go to the cinema?]Arlt: Rarísima vez. [Very infrequently.]Señora: ¿Por qué no va? [Why don't you go?]Arlt: Me aburren las cintas de amor. [Love films bore me.]Señora: Hace unos días leí una estadística en un diario de la mañana. ¿Sabe cúantos cines hay en este país? Dos mil doscientos cines. [A couple of days ago I read a statistic in a morning paper. Do you know how many theaters there are in this country? Two thousand two hundred theaters.]Arlt: ¡Diablo! ¿Y trabajan todos? [Damn! And all of them are working?]Señora: Y todos hacen pasar cintas de amor. [And all show love films.]Arlt: Efectivamente. Es la gran mercadería. [Exactly. It's a big business.] (1997, p. 79).
8. Much of Douglas Gomery's examination (1992) of the Balaban & Katz movie palaces of the 1920s is applicable to theaters in Buenos Aires like the Astor in the early 1930s. One particular example of this description of the functionality of the theaters, notes that “these overpowering spaces were also highly functional. Everyone had a perfect view of the screen” (p. 48). In addition, as Gomery states, sound and lighting in these theaters were dramatically improved in comparison with their predecessors. This is also the case in Buenos Aires, as the Astor and theaters like it provided an optimal space to escape the pressures of everyday life.
9. Technological and technical limitations restricted how Lumiton captured sound in Los tres berretines as the directorial team were limited by the technical inability to capture audio outside of a soundstage or sound studio. Because of these restrictions, the spaces represented in the film are usually indoors, although there are a few scenes that take place outside. Besides background or white noise, sound in the film was recorded in a sound studio.
10. It is useful to note that the film shows little of Lorenzo's life outside of the soccer stadium.
11. Although many critics have equated Luis Sandrini's character of Eusebio in Los tres berretines with the Berretín character he plays in Tango! and Riachuelo, Eusebio is quite distinct from Berretín: “Berretín, el apelativo que recibe en TANGO!!! y RIACHUELO, se distingue por su orfandad, su analfabetismo, su tartamudeo y su candidez, al menos a partir de su película consagratoria” [Berretín, the name he receives in TANGO!!! and RIACHUELO, is characterized by his orphanhood, his illiterateness, his stuttering, and his candidness, at least after the film that established him] (Campodónico et al. 2006, pp. 83–84) (capitals original to the quote).
12. Lunfardo is an argot of Spanish endemic to the River Plate region that rose out of the waves of immigration – primarily Italian, especially from the southern regions – of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The the first verse of ‘Araca la cana’ implements a number of lunfardo words and phrases:
¡Araca la cana!/Ya estoy engriyao/Un par de ojos negros me han engayolao./Ojazos profundos, oscuros y bravos,/tajantes y fieros hieren al mirar,/con brillos de acero que van a matar./De miedo al mirarlos el cuor me ha fayao./¡Araca la cana! ya estoy engriyao.
The song's lyrics roughly translate to:
Watch out for cops!/I'm imprisoned/A pair of black eyes have arrested me/Big, profound eyes, dark and fierce/sharp and ferocious they hurt at a look/with sparkles of steel that will kill/from fear of looking at them my heart has failed me/watch out for prison! I'm imprisoned!