Made in Joinville: Transnational Identitary Aesthetics in Carlos Gardel's Early Paramount Films

Abstract

The arrival of sound technologies in the cinema fundamentally changed film production and consumption. Fearing a potential loss in market share in foreign markets such as that of Latin America due to the inevitable premieres of talkies produced by national industries, Hollywood studios began devising strategies to exert and extend their hegemonic market position. Though an initial strategy centering on multilinguals failed, Paramount ultimately achieved success through the production in their studios in Joinville, France, of Spanish-language original features. Some of the most successful, both commercially and artistically, of these features are those films of Carlos Gardel. In this paper, I explore the ways in which the protagonists Gardel plays channel affective and identitary connections to cinematic geography in the three feature films he shot for Paramount in their Joinville studios: Las luces de Buenos Aires (The Lights of Buenos Aires, Adelqui Millar, 1931), ¡Esperáme!, (Wait for me!, Louis Gasnier, 1932), and Melodía de arrabal (Suburban Melody, Gasnier, 1932). I argue that the increasingly regional deterritorialization in these early Paramount films not only mediated but embodied by Gardel's protagonists suggests an attempt to create an ostensibly authentic and commercially viable transnational Hispanic cinema.

Notes

 1 Hollywood's hegemonic market position in Latin America in the early twentieth century has been commented upon to a varying degree by a number of critics, including Borge, López, Schnitman, and Usabel. Though detailing its rather complex rise to dominate the Latin American market lies outside the scope of this article, it is useful to note that American cinema only began to achieve (uneven) international dominance in the early- to mid-1910s.

 2 Heinink argues that ‘Mexicans, Argentines, Cubans, Spanish… weren't ready to give their approval to pronunciations of Spanish different from their uses in their own territories, and, in the attempt to please everyone, it is necessary to recognize that yes, they failed’ (1993: 39–40).

 3 It could be argued that this ‘universality’ was more a creation of commercial ubiquity, a consequence of the ease with which silent films were adapted both linguistically and otherwise, than a kind of aesthetic or thematic transcendence.

 4 In the case of Tango! and, later, ¡Esperáme!, I maintain the idiosyncratic nature of the titles as shown in the films' credits. The former lacks its inverted exclamation mark and the latter includes a redundant accent for the ‘vos’ command of the verb ‘esperar’ (‘to wait’).

 5 Multilinguals are commented upon to a varying degree, and with different focuses, by a number of critics including Barnier, D'Lugo, Ďurovičová, Heinink, Nornes, and Vincendeau.

 6 The famous multilingual/Esperanto comparison comes from Erich Pommer, the influential producer of such films as Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Wiene, 1920), Die Nibelungen (Siegfried, Lang 1924), and Metropolis (Lang, 1927). Vincendeau proposes that there were basically two strategies to combat the loss of international markets after sound arrived to cinema: those of MGM and Paramount. In Paramount's solution, the studio imported ‘directors, scriptwriters and actors from each country to Hollywood’ (1988: 24). MGM's focus, meanwhile, was the production of original material in the language of the target market.

 7 El Zorzal [The thrush] is one of Carlos Gardel's most famous nicknames. Others include Carlitos [Little Carlos], El Francesito [The Little Frenchman], El Morocho del Abasto [The Morocho, a term meaning ‘dark-haired’ in River Plate Spanish, of the Abasto, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires], El Rey del Tango [The King of the Tango], El Troesma [vesre – a kind of porteño slang akin to pig Latin – for El Maestro, The Master].

 8 I use Tim Cresswell's definition that ‘Place, at a basic level, is space invested with meaning in the context of power’ (2006: 12). The highly interrelated term ‘space’ is used in reference to more abstract spatiality.

 9 Because of the lack of particularity in the mise-en-scène, the films have all the qualities of a ‘canned theater production’, which Ďurovičová defines as ‘minimal camera movement, predominately theatrical rather than analytical space, conversational rather than action-oriented dramaturgy’ (1992: 145). It is also useful to note here that feminine pronouns are employed in reference to the non-gendered ideal viewer.

10 The fourth, a short entitled La casa es seria (The House is Serious. Jacquelux, 1932), has since been lost.

11 The frantic production schedules imposed by Paramount would continue throughout Gardel's career. Rubén Pesce states, ‘Regarding the film ¡Esperáme!, Mario Battistella tells the story in his memoirs about the infernally pressured form in which he had to work together with Gardel and Le Pera in the composition of the songs for the film, which was shot in twenty two days’ (1977: 1419). Similarly, in a letter he wrote to his Buenos Aires-based business manager Armando Defino on March 21 of 1934, Gardel states, ‘I just signed a contract with Paramount in a pretty sum I'll skip telling you about: two films beginning April, 16 here in New York where the ultra-modern studios are, that according to general opinion will end up being a marvel’ (Defino 1968: 107). In short, Gardel and his team had a month to put together the two films: Cuesta abajo (Dir. Gasnier, 1934) and El tango en Broadway (Dir. Gasnier, 1934).

12 In the biography The Life, Music, and Times of Carlos Gardel, Collier traces the development of Gardel's performing repertoire. Gardel fine-tuned his act throughout his career; as he gained national and, later, international fame, Gardel tweaked his act to the tastes of his audience. Collier contends that ‘In later years this [use of everyday porteño speech] changed somewhat; and here there is a development of Gardel's style that must be reckoned with. With greater exposure to foreign audiences, with a growing ambition to figure as a truly international star, the singer began to modify his repertoire, to prune his porteño vocabulary (though never completely), and to smooth out his style. What he lost in local authenticity he gained, as Octavio Ramírez pointed out, “in refinement and in taste, without ever losing emotion”’ (1986: 158).

13 Paulo Antonio Paranagúa argues that the melodrama is both traditional and transnational in Latin America: ‘In addition to the plans of the studios and the star system, the “Hispanic” experience also weighed in regards to thematic and generic options. More than half of full-length features in Spanish were inscribed within the parameters of the melodrama, thus reinforcing Hollywood's influence in this traditional genre in Latin America, independently of its other roots (European literary and theatrical legacy, Italian silent melodrama, the tango, the bolero, the radio soap opera, the “pink novel”)’ (1996: 222).

14 ‘Un “Film” Excelente Es “Las luces de Buenos Aires”: El Ambiente Porteño Está Fielmente Reflejado’, La Nación (Buenos Aires), sec. 2, Sept. 24, 1931.

15 Numerous thinkers have explored the relationship between modernity and mobility. One notable example is Cresswell's On the Move: Mobility in the Western World.

16 Because of its broader transnational appeal, this nostalgia marks a shift from the more localized varieties expressed in a wide range of Latin American silent films like Alma provinciana (Provincial Soul, Rodríguez, 1926), a Colombian picture, and two Chilean films, La agonía del Arauco (Arauco Agony, Giambastiani, 1917) and El húsar de la muerte (The Hussar of Death, Sienna, 1925).

17 Ruffinelli equates the resulting drama to an inverted Cinderella in which the female character searches for her soulmate's voice (2004: 56–57).

18 García Jiménez astutely reminds us that Gardel's success was built upon an identity that was rooted in a repertoire that had already become increasingly deterritorialized (1977: 1365).