ABSTRACT
Between 1935 and 1962, at least ten social-problem films addressed the issue of the "place" of the Mexican American in the United States. With the exception of two gang-exploitation films—Boulevard Nights and Walk Proud —these remained the only feature-length films to be "about" Mexican Americans or Chicanos until the emergence of Chicano-produced feature films in the late 1970s. These films were produced at a significant moment in the development of an American as well as an ethnic-American national identity. In that subtle yet significant shift, these two Chicano-produced feature films initiated a counterdiscourse on Mexican-American citizenship, one that stressed a cultural-nationalist, rather than assimilationist, identity, or found traces of it in historical dramas of resistance such as Zoot Suit and Break of Dawn. It is a rare moment in the American cinema on ethnicity, one that stops the narrative cold, with both hope and uncertainty.
