Modernity at the Movies

Cinema-going in Buenos Aires and Santiago, 1915-1945

Camila Gatica Mizala

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780822989738
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Cinema can both reflect the world as it is and offer escape from it. In Modernity at the Movies, Camila Gatica Mizala explores the ideas of reflection versus escapism and examines how modes of understanding the current moment emerged through the practice of going to the movies in Santiago and Buenos Aires between 1915 and 1945. Using cinema and variety magazines published in both cities, she analyzes the technology, architecture, attendance, behavior, language, censorship, and overall experience of cinema-going. These publications regularly engaged with important topics such as morality and urbanization and helped build a cinematographic audience. Gatica Mizala brings together the perception and reception of cinema as a modern art form, shifting the focus from the production of films to the experience of the audience when viewing them. By focusing on the audience instead of the films, this study is able to articulate the ways that cinema, as a modern activity, was incorporated into everyday life and discuss what it meant to be modern in early to midcentury Latin America.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Comfort, Elegance, and Safety: Cinema Architecture and Modernity
• 2. Everyone Goes to the Movies: Ticket Prices and Types of Audiences
• 3. Building the Modern Citizen: Censorship as Cinema’s Civilizing Action
• 4. “Between the Indecisive and Pale Light”
• 5. Cervantes’s Beautiful Language: Intertitles, Subtitles, and Dubbing
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index