Actresses and female characters of Latin American cinema (1930-1940)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss and analyze the aesthetic, political and social aspects of representations of women in Latin American cinema produced in the 1930s and 1940s. The characterizations of the female characters are analyzed in the films Limite (Mário Peixoto, Brazil, 1931), Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, Mexico, 1948) and Mujeres que trabajan (Manuel Romero, Argentina, 1938). The proposal is to characterize the woman who manifests herself in the issues of work, gender, politics and society going through the revolutions and political moments of Latin American countries, beyond the critical perspective of their symbolic conditions, emphasizing a reading of resistance that thinks the issue from the point of view of feminism, Latin American epistemologies and film theory. This analysis extends  to women soldiers of the Mexican Revolution, to women in  their condition as workers seeking emancipation through work and consumption in Argentine cinema, to working women, prostitutes, seamstresses and housewives, in less formal conditions in Brazilian cinema. The relationships between the representations of the feminine and the politics of these cinematographies are seen beyond the strategies, aesthetics and narratives developed by the filmmakers for the elaboration of their contents. It is interesting to find in the links the relationships of the actress with her character, which contemplates the gestures that can break with defined standards to constitute a discourse that flees from the norms historically imposed on them.