La historia argentina a traves del cine: Las "visiones delpasado" (1933-2003).

Ascarate, Richard John

La historia argentina a traves del cine: Las "visiones delpasado" (1933-2003)

Eduardo Jakubowicz and Laura Radetich, Buenos Aires: La Crujia Ediciones, 2006. ISBN 987-601-015-8 Paper 209 pp. $30.00

Potential readers should know that Eduardo Jakubowicz and Laura Radetich's La historia argentina a traves del cine: Las "visiones del pasado" (1933-2003) [The History of Argentina through Cinema: Visions of the Past (1933-2003)] will be inaccessible to anyone possessed of less than an educated-native level of Spanish proficiency. Further, the authors assume a more than passing acquaintance with the grand events, movements, and personalities of Argentinean history since 1933. (Having seen "Evita" or taken a Latin American history course in college will not suffice.) Finally, their argument demands broad familiarity with scores of Argentinean films produced during the period examined. Most of the films they cover receive only passing mention, single-sentence thematic summaries, with nary a synopsis in sight. This book will be a frustrating read for all but a few specialists.

Even then, frustrations will mount: "En este momento," the authors assert in a tone somewhat reminiscent of Barthes or Benjamin, "debemos pensar en la posibilidad de que gran parte de las evidencias historicas del siglo XX solo las podemos encontrar en imagenes" ["We now need to consider the possibility that much of the historical evidence for the twentieth century will be found only in images"] (17). Inexplicably, despite this debatable pronouncement (print, real or virtual, does not seem to be in decline), Jakubowicz and Radetich include no screen grabs or images of any kind to prompt memories, to illustrate points.

"La historia es un reflejo del pasado," the authors argue, "pero en el cine este reflejo o este 'espejo' puede distorsionar, dislocar, condenser, simbolizar y calificar aquello que es representado" ["History is a reflection of the past, but in cinema, this reflection--this 'mirror'--can distort, dislocate, condense, symbolize, and qualify that which is represented"] (19). While recognizing that any film can be used as a historical source or as testimony of an era, Jakubowicz and Radetich select those films that "'intencionalmente' abordan el 'pasado' o tienen como pretension 'hacer historia'" ["'intentionally' address the 'past' or exhibit pretensions of 'making history'"] (24). These introductory remarks aside, what follows are six chapters divided by the fits and starts of Argentina's history. A familiar pattern obtains as the authors provide two or three pages of political history, a page or two of contemporaneous cinematic developments, and what amounts to extended lists of films that highlight given events or political climates cited in the history. A summary of the first chapter, covering the 1930s, suggests the flavor of the whole:

On 6 September 1930, General Jose Felix Uriburu assumed the presidency of Argentina after staging a coup that toppled incumbent Hipolito Yrigoyen. Nationalists, who hoped to restore the oligarchic regime that had managed the country since 1916, supported the general. The Great Depression, however, had stripped Argentina of its European export markets. Uriburu was soon replaced by Agustin Pedro Justo, who was widely suspected of electoral fraud. Justo instituted policies that favored the elite and preserved the status quo. Ricardo [sic] Ortiz succeeded him in 1938, relinquishing power in 1942 due to poor health. All true and accurate, if disconnected. Jakubowicz and Radetich provide no further context, intra- or international, no indication of how forces great and small contributed to Argentina's development, to the emergence of this political leader or ideology over that one. Yrigoyen, for example, an advocate for the working class, was extremely popular, being twice elected to the presidency. Ill health and age (he was 76 upon assuming office the second time) likely undermined his performance as much as discontent among the nation's elite. Uriburu, by the same token, implemented several reforms to right the nation's economy and--remarkably for one who began his career with a coup--kept his promise to step down once the citizens of Argentina had chosen a successor. He died in Paris shortly thereafter from stomach cancer.

Meanwhile, the authors note, film had acquired sound (actually, in 1927 with Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer). Notwithstanding this added dimension and its release of artistic potential, Argentinean cinema touched only lightly and later in the decade on historical themes. Instead, "[e]n los primeros anos del sonoro, el cine argentine esta claramente identificado con paisajes urbanos portenos o del campo pampeano claramente reconocibles, personajes portenos o gauchescos" ["in the first years of sound, Argentinean cinema was clearly identified with urban Buenos Aires landscapes or with the recognizable countryside of the pampas, with city-dwellers or gauchos"] (33). A number of films were also concerned with themes of military and homeland (35), among them, Muchachada de a Bordo [Boys on Board] (Manuel Romero, 1937), Cadetes de San Martin [Cadets of St. Martin] (Mario Soffici, 1938), and Murio el Sargento Laprida [Sergeant Laprida Died] (Tito Davison, 1937). With nationalist ideologues having co-opted cinema for purposes of propaganda and political distraction, Jakubowicz and Radetich conclude that "estos sectores tuvieran como hipotesis llevar adelante una batalla cultural por imponer sus ideas autoritarias, y desde esta perspective la intervencion del Estado era una forma ordenada y garantida de triunfo en ese enfrentamiento ideologico en la Argentina y en el mundo" ["these sectors assumed they were advancing a cultural battle to impose their authoritarian ideas, and from this perspective, state intervention was a an orderly vehicle to guarantee victory in the ideological struggle confronting Argentina and the world"] (45). Again, one longs for deeper penetration into the synergies and antagonisms of politics, culture, and cinema during this distant time and in this distant place.

Subsequent chapters cover the 1940s, during which historical themes and "visiones del pasado" ["visions of the past"] became more prevalent; the 1950s, when history again disappeared from the screen, only to reappear with the May 1968 strikes and civil unrest in France; the period from 1968 to 1975, wherein Argentina saw seven different presidents, two by coups d'etat, two by direct election, one by the resignation of his predecessor, one interim occupant, and one by the death of her husband in office); the years from 1976-1983, which saw further coups d'etat, censorship, and the forced disappearance of thousands of Argentineans for political reasons; and the Malvinas/Falklands War, whose effects were "reflejados en mas de una decena de filmes sobre todo a partir de la recuperacion democratica" and which "produjeron en los ultimos anos una cifra de muertes y suicidios entre los ex combatientes superior a los muertos que hubo durante el conflicto" ["reflected in more than a dozen films, above all since the recovery of democracy," and which "brought about in the last years a greater number of deaths and suicides among veterans than were suffered during the war"] (137)). The book closes with the decades from 1983 to 2003, which witnessed "un proceso de auge de las visiones del pasado y el cine historico que...continua hasta nuestros dfas" ["an increase in visions of the past and of historical cinema that.continues to this day"] (147).

Brevity and breakneck pacing consign Jakubowicz and Radetich's study to a generic limbo. Too lean and cursory to be either history or film analysis proper, the book may best be described as an outline of modern Argentinean history as expressed through representative samples of the nation's cinema. Those seeking a deeper, more sustained treatment of the subject will have to look elsewhere.