ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ideological tension articulated in these early talkies between the defense of national tradition and the fascination with the spectacle of modernity. It reviews the first sound films produced in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. The chapter includes a detailed discussion of La fuga, an aesthetically complex attempt to solve the marketing and ideological riddle at the heart of national cinemas in Latin America: how to create a faithful national audience for domestic talkies out of spectators whose taste and conception of the filmgoing experience had been profoundly shaped by the modernist ethos of Hollywood. As theoretical categories, both cosmopolitanism and transnationalism have raised heated debates among critics not only within historical discussions of national identity, but also as part of current debates about globalization and universalism. In Argentina, the significant array of cosmopolitan, international, and intermedial influences that led to the emergence of sound-film during the early 1930s are well documented.
