Film Criticism in Mexico in the 1940s Notes for a Critical History of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema

Abstract

The 1940’s in Mexico brought together a heterogeneous community of journalists, film critics and intellectuals in order to acquaint, value, promote, criticize and give meaning to the film culture that framed the era, resulting in a vast offer of film magazines that appeared those years. In addition to the space that the press in general offered within its pages to the phenomenon from the consolidation of the Mexican film industry, placing its production as a subject of national interest for public opinion, the historiography of Mexican cinema finds little relationship with this discourse. The reasons for what we perceive as a problematic gap within the historical studies of film culture in Mexico can be found in the conflictive character of mediation, inherent in the journalistic-advertising device with the interests of the then powerful industry. A minimal panoramic study allows us to understand the theoretical bases and principles of this discourse that largely supports the idea of the so-called “golden age of Mexican cinema”.