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From Film Image to History

The Lighting-up of Golden-Age Cinema in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Julia Tuñón
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Extract

      La diversité des témoignages historiques est presque infinie. Tout ce que l'homme dit ou écrit, tout ce qu'il fabrique, tout ce qu'il touche peut et doit renseigner sur lui.
    Marc Bloch

Judging from all the evidence we have, it appears that History must start again to look at aspects of the human existence in their time and must open up to the realm of imagination, of affectivity, and of mental attitudes; to put it differently, it must work from a new basis of sensibility and with different questions, with novel sources and themes that permit us to learn more about what happens in the public and private spheres, about the exceptional and the common, about the real and the symbolic, about social practices and about the dominant ideology, as well as the links that connect those divergent fields. Such an approach presupposes a particular attitude toward historical evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 42 , Issue 167 , September 1994 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. Film History. Theory and Practice (New York, 1985).

2. Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien (Paris, 1993, first publ. 1949), 108.

3. Cited in: M. de Orellana, Imágenes del pasado (Mexico, UNAM-CUEC), No. 7, 16.

4. Sociologie du cinéma (Paris, 1984), 399.

5. Quoted in: E. Morin, Le Cinéma ou l'Homme imaginaire (Paris, 1956), 31.

6. M. Ferro, Analyse des films. Analyse de sociétés (Paris, 1976), 12.

7. Idem, Cinéma et Histoire (Paris, 1977), 128.

8. For Ferro it is important to "leave the image, the images; not merely to look in them for illustrations, confirmation or rejection of another meaning, i.e., that of the written tradition; to consider images in this way means an end to making reference to other meanings to gain a better understanding of them." Ibid., 102.

9. P. Sorlin, Sociologie du cinéma. Ouverture pour l'histoire de demain (Paris, 1977), 200.

10. Cited in J. Romaguera and E. Riambau, La Historia y el Cine (Madrid, 1983), 14-15.

11. See his "Histoire intellectuelle et histoire des mentalités. Trajectoires et ques tions," in: idem, La Sensibilité dans l'histoire (Saint-Pierre-de-Salerne, 1987).

12. In 1934 some 52 million tickets were sold for events like cinema, theater, corri das, cock fights, sports, and fun fairs, of which 70 percent were for movies and 22.5 percent for theater. In 1947 the total was 115 million, of which 92.4 percent were for cinema and 1.6 percent for theater. See J. Iturriaga, La Estructura social y cultural de Mexico (Mexico, 1951), 206-7.

13. Roger Chartier has defined the contents of thought as an ensemble of "condi tionnements non sus ou intériorisés qui font qu'un groupe ou une société partage, sans qu'il soit besoin de les expliciter, un système de repésentations et un système de valeurs." Op. cit., 17.

14. El mundo como representación. Historia cultural: entre practica y presentación (Barcelona, 1992), IX-X.

15. Soviet cinema during the Stalinist period, East German films, and Hollywood war movies have been the object of numerous analytical readings along these lines.

16. Popular culture is seen here as the ensemble of beliefs, ideas, and values that shape the dealings of people in society as well as the objects which are created within a social group. Its development is closely linked to mentalities and daily life. Today, it resorts to mechanisms of massive anxiety which is why it is asso ciated with mass culture.

17. Memoria y modernidad. Cultura popular en América Latina (Mexico, 1993), 26.

18. This current of thought was widely accepted during the 1960s, and notably among authors like Adorno, Horkheimer, or Mattelart.

19. We have dealt with this topic in "Mujeres de luz y sombra en el cine mexicano. La construcción masculina de una imagen, 1939-1952" (PhD. thesis, Mexico).

20. We understand by genre an ensemble of films that display a common language, theme, symbols and stereotypes and that thus represent an analytical unity. The foundation of the melodrama in film is the theatrical melodrama which in turn emerged from the serial novel.

21. Marc Bloch wrote in 1941 that " … in the immense fabric of events, of gestures and phrases that compose the destiny of human groups. The individual only sees a small corner, narrowly confined by his senses and his observation; because he moreover never possesses the immediate consciousness other than his own mental states." Op. cit., 100.

22. Op. cit., 287.

23. Ibid., 294.

24. We are dealing here with a simplification of role characteristics through omis sion, reduction, or deformation. Once established, stereotypes tend to reinforce themselves, to repeat themselves: they become reified. The use of a standard ized, exaggerated, and simplified stereotype has the effect that the public recog nises it and identifies with it.

25. We are not dealing with completely separate beings. They only fulfill a function in the plot, they are the personification of abstract ideas that situate the charac ter in a fixed place in a story which only gathers speed thanks to the actions and the interrelations of all protagonists.

26. In Paul Veyne's view, every society considers its discourse as something self-evident. It is the task of the historian to restore this importance which renders daily life secretly central to all epochs: this banality or—what comes to the same thing -this strangeness which are unconscious. See F. Ewald, "Una nueva etapa de la nueva historia: entre lo público et lo privado. Entrevista a Paul Veyne," in: Historias, 14, 1986, 7.

27. Op. cit., 162.

28. M. Ferro, op. cit., 10.

29. P. Sorlin, op. cit., 36.

30. E. Morin, op. cit., 117.

31. A. Tudor, Cine y communicación social (Barcelona, 1974).

32. J. Tuñón, "La silueta de un vacío: imagenes filmicas de la familia mexicana en los años cuarenta," (in press).

33. Op. cit., 156-57.

34. We refer to all those who produce a work, from the script-writer to the editor, film crew, and director.

35. J. M. Barbero, "Memoria narrative e industria cultural," in: Communicación y cultura, 10, 1993,119.

36. A. De Los Reyes, Medio siglo de cine mexicano, 1896-1947 (Mexico, 1987), 164-77.

37. Conversation with A. Galindo, Testimonios del cine mexicano. Cuadernos de la Cineteca Nacional (Mexico, 1975), Vol. I, 103.

38. J. Tuñón, "La ciudad actriz: la image en el cine mexicano, 1940-1955," in: Historias, 27, 1991-92, 189-97.

39. Idem, Instrumento de Dios. Manos de hombre (in press), XVIII.

40. Idem, "Entre lo natural y lo monstruoso: violencia y violación en el cine mexi cano de la edad de oro," in: P. Bedello et al., Estudios de género y feminismo, Vol. I (Mexico, 1989), 57-67.