THE EARLY BEGINNINGS OF THE ARGENTINE CRIME FILM: SOMETHING SINISTER ENTERS ARGENTINA’S DREAMWORLD OF SONG AND DANCE

The crime film or policial arrived somewhat belatedly in Argentina. With the introduction of sound synchronization technologies into local film production in 1933, Argentine audiences remained enthralled with local musicals that combined comedy and romance. While some of these films contained depictions of class conflict and petty criminality in Buenos Aires, most audiences came to the cinema to see the musical performances of rising celebrities like Libertad Lamarque and Carlos Gardel or the antics of comedians Tita Merello and Luis Sandrini. The fact that filmmakers built their careers and reputations in studio musicals is confirmed by the biographies of the directors that scholars cite as two of the first policiales produced by the country’s two top studios in this period: 1937’s Outside the Law/Fuera de la ley (Manuel Romero) and 1940’s With His Finger on the Trigger/Con el dedo en el gatillo (Luis Moglia Barth) (Peña 2012: 55–56, 84). The director of the first, Manuel Romero, began his career writing lyrics for Carlos Gardel’s first feature – the 1931 tango comedy The Lights of Buenos Aires/Las luces de Buenos Aires (Adelqui Migliar) – which was filmed at Paramount’s Joinville foreign-language studio in France. The director of the second, Luis Moglia Barth, had his biggest hit with the 1933 film ¡Tango! – the star-studded musical promoted as Argentina’s first sound film.

In even the most hard-boiled of the early policial films, the soundtrack is still the main attraction. Eminent poets and songwriters were employed as librettists to compose liberetto (or libro) theme songs that might turn the film into a hit in a film industry with growing transnational ties to Hollywood that was anchored in the promotion of films through soundtracks and singers (Borges 2018: 64–65). In early policial films, these songs are typically performed in shows staged within film that offered the audience the vicarious pleasure of a musical attraction justified by the morality tale of the narrative. The wellknown production duo of songwriter Homero Manzi and poet Ulyses Petit de Murat began their work in screenwriting with the policial Con el dedo en el gatillo. Manzi had earlier written lyrics for the tango ‘¡Salud Salud!’ (Performed by Ada Falcón) featured in the 1938 policial, Downpour/Turbión (Antonio Momplet). In one of the most fascinating later cases of music getting top billing in an Argentine crime film, tango composer Lucio Demare collaborated with writers Carlos Olivari and Sixto Pondal Ríos on the 1944 policial Death by Appointment/El muerto falta a la cita, directed by Belgian-French filmmakerin- exile Pierre Chenal.