Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Mar 2021)
The Fugitive Gaucho and the Femme Fatale: The Peronization of Criollismo and the Feminization of Politics in the Film Juan Moreira (1948), by Luis José Moglia Barth
Abstract
Published as a feuilleton in 1879, Eduardo Gutiérrez' novel Juan Moreira became -thanks to its multiple adaptations- a central text of the phenomenon of Criollismo in Argentine culture at the turn of the century. In recent decades, reviewing Adolfo Prieto's landmark work on the subject, a set of studies have reframed the scope of Criollismo based on its relationship with popular culture and the mass media throughout the 20th century. In dialogue with these approaches, the article focuses on the film version of Moreira that Luis José Moglia Barth directed in 1948, and its connection to the emergence of Peronism and the feminization of politics. In this sense, I argue that the film evidences the way in which Criollista cinema was losing its symbolic effectiveness as a discourse capable of channeling popular demands, to be relieved in that role by the emerging Peronist myth and its various forms of intervention on cinema. To this end, three specific aspects of the film are analyzed: the introduction of a femme fatale that was not in the original story, the premiere during the carnival celebrations of 1948, and the nostalgic configuration of the protagonist.
