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Beneficent Cinema: State Formation, Elite Reproduction, and Silent Film in Uruguay, 1910s–1920s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Christine Ehrick
Christine Ehrick*
Affiliation:
University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky
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In her study of early cinema and modernity in Latin America, Ana López wrote: “Latin American modernity has been a global, intertextual experience, addressing impulses and models from abroad, in which every nation and region created, and creates, its own ways of playing with and at modernity.” Early Uruguayan cinema exemplifies this interaction of global phenomena with local realities and thus provides an instructive window onto some of the ways Latin Americans were “playing with and at modernity” in the early twentieth century. During that era, Uruguay emerged as Latin America’s first welfare state and a model of progressive reform in the region. The complexities of that transition are reflected in so-called cine de beneficencia (beneficent cinema), film made by and for social assistance organizations for fundraising and propaganda purposes. Film historian José Carlos Álvarez identifies beneficent cinema as “something that we think was purely Uruguayan, and specific to this era.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 63 , Special_Issue 2: Latin American Film History , October 2006 , pp. 205 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2006 

Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Rocky Mountain Council of Latin American Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico in March 2004, and at the Women and the Silent Screen Conference, Montreal, Canada in June 2004. Many thanks go to Ana López for editing this special volume and for all of her helpful advice and suggestions on this article. Special thanks also to Manuel Martínez Carríl, Director of Cinemateca Uruguaya, for facilitating my access to the two films discussed in this paper, and to Nancy Isenberg, who provided invaluable direction and inspiration during this project’s early stages. Thanks also are owed to William Beezley and Seth Fein for helping to get this project off the ground, to José Moya for his help on the “Basque question,” to Verónica Pamoukaghlián for her research assistance in Montevideo, and to Ricardo Glucksmann for sharing information on his family’s history in the Río de la Plata.

References

1 López, Ana M., “Early Cinema and Modernity in Latin America,” Cinema Journal 40:1 (Fall 2000), p. 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Álvarez, José Carlos, “Pervanche,” in Eugenio Hintz, Historía y filmografía del cine Uruguayo (Montevideo: Cinemateca Uruguaya, 1988), p. 2 Google Scholar.

3 Asistencia Pública Nacional, Publicación oficial de la dirección general (Montevideo, 1913), p.7.

4 Gerda Lerner defines paternalism as “the relationship of a dominant group—considered superior— to a subordinate group—considered inferior—in which the dominance is mitigated by mutual obligations and reciprocal rights.” This conceptualization is echoed in Sandra Lauderdale Graham’s study of masters and servants in nineteenth century Brazil, where she describes relationships based on unequal interac tions of “protection and obedience,” relations not limited to master/servant interaction, but diffused throughout Brazilian society. See Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 239 Google Scholar, and Graham, Sandra Lauderdale, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

5 For more on Batllismo and paternalism, see Ehrick, Christine, “To Serve the Nation: Juvenile Mothers, Paternalism and State Formation in Uruguay, 1910–1930,” Social Science History 29: 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 489–518 Google Scholar.

6 In this Batllista Uruguay resembles the French welfare state of the Third Republic. See, for example, Horne, Janet R., A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Stamp, Shelley, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 5–6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See, for example, Caneto, Guillermo et al, “Historia del cine mudo en la Argentina, 1896–1933,” in Fundación del cine latinoaméricano, ed., Cine Latinoaméricano (1896-1930) (Caracas, Venezuela: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura, 1992)Google Scholar. Here, the authors describe similar patterns of elite patronage of and participation in early Argentine cinema to that observed in the Uruguayan case. In an article on early Cuban cinema in the same volume, the authors observe that “for the bourgeoisie and professional classes . . . cinema became a location for social and family encounters” (See Mesa, Héctor García et al “ El cine mudo en Cuba, 1897–1933,” in Fundación del cine latinoaméricano, Cine Latinoaméricano, p. 148)Google Scholar. This same article also mentions that in Cuba, in contrast to the elite film fundraisers documented in places like Uruguay and Argentina, labor unions held similar events to raise money for strikers. All of this raises intriguing questions about the comparative class politics of early cinema, a theme that lies beyond the scope of the present project.

9 “Notas sociales: Entre Nous,” Página Blanca (15 July 1915), p. 55 Google Scholar.

10 “Nous, De Entre,” El Día (25 April 1918), p. 6 Google Scholar.

11 “Nous, Entre,” El Día (17 September 1919), p. 7 Google Scholar. See also “Nous, Entre,” El Día (10 September 1919), p. 6 Google Scholar.

12 “Beneficencia, De,” El Día (9 June 1919), p. 6 Google Scholar; “Nous, Entre,” El Día (10 September 1919), p. 6 Google Scholar.

13 Rather than engage in film screening and production, the conservative Catholic Ladies’ League entered into radio broadcasting in the late 1920s as a means to spread “the good word” and recruit for their organization.

14 Zapiola, Guillermo, “El cine mudo en Uruguay,” Fundación del cine latinoaméricano, Cine Latinoaméricano, p. 327 Google Scholar.

15 “De Beneficencia,” El Día (26 September 1919), p. 7 Google Scholar.

16 “Nous, Entre,” El Día (6 November 1919), p. 6 Google Scholar.

17 Consejo Patronato de Delincuentes y Menores, 1927 Folder 88, 1-5. Archivo General de la Nación, Montevideo, Uruguay.

18 “Del ‘Film’ de Beneficencia,” El Día (11 July 1929), p. 11, “El film de la Bonne Garde,” El Día (03 August 1929), p. 12.

19 See for example, Soto, Antonio (‘Boy’), Marú: novela romántica desarrollada en cartas (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1927)Google Scholar.

20 Zapiola, , “El cine mudo en Uruguay,” in Cine Latinoaméricano, p. 327 Google Scholar

21 “El film de la Bonne Garde,” El Día (03 August 1929), p. 12.

22 “El Señor Bernardo Max Glucksmann,” El Día (7 April 1928), p. 7.

23 Zapiola, , “El cine mudo,” p. 327 Google Scholar. We are introduced to some of the cast members in the intertitles, others are provided elsewhere.

24 Scarone, Arturo, Uruguayos Contemporáneos (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1937), p. 454 Google Scholar. Whether Saralegui wrote any music for the film is unknown.

25 See, for example, El Días Theater Column; 30 April 1928 p. 9 and 4 May 1928, p. 8.

26 Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 78–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Moya, José C., Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 232–234 Google Scholar.

28 See Bederman’s analysis of Tarzan in Manliness and Civilization, pp. 218-232 for more on the idealization of the combination of “superior” blood and “savage” upbringing.

29 This term, used throughout the film to refer to Juan Alberto and his sister, is another example of the local slang used in Del Pingo. The term literally refers to those who come “para afuera” (from the interior), rendered in the “hick” pronunciation of the Rio Platense countryside.

30 Overcivilized femininity, Bederman explains, manifested itself in women’s ignoring their maternal duties and “drained their capacity to be healthy mothers.” Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, p. 87.

31 Tatlock, Álvaro Casal, El autómovil en el Uruguay: Los años heroicos, 1900-1930 (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1981), p. 58 Google Scholar.

32 Tatlock, El autómovil, pp. 42-43.

33 It is significant that there is no moral judgment at all passed on the mother for this act of manipulation—nor is there ever any issue made of the fact that the two lovers are first cousins.

34 “Importante Aviso,” El Eco de la Liga de Damas Católicas del Uruguay 263 (August 1931), p. 3261.

35 Alison Parker discusses a similar pattern in the United States, where a ‘male-dominated’ state regulatory apparatus began to encroach on the traditionally female world of social assistance in the early twentieth century. See Parker, Alison M., Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 10 Google Scholar.