Del mito gaucho al mito peronista: la decadencia del cine criollista en La cabalgata del circo (Soffici 1945)

Abstract

The article explores the decline of Criollista cinema during early Peronism, based on the study of Mario Soffici’s 1945 film La cabalgata del circo/Circus Cavalcade and the political circumstances around it, including Eva Duarte’s performance, the violent incidents during the premiere and the role of the censorship. The central hypothesis is that the film inaugurates a kind of symbolic relay: Peronism appropriates nineteenth-century emblems such as the gaucho myth or the romantic woman, and incorporates them into the emerging Peronist myth. This gives the Criollista cinema of the time the tone of a retreating criollismo, which is articulated as a second degree nostalgia: if criollismo was always marked by nostalgia for a pre-modern golden age, La cabalgata del circo reveals a nostalgia for that nostalgia, given that it is not only a Criollista story but also a history of criollismo. The research is based on the analysis of the film, its links with the historical-political context and the way it adapts the Criollista novel Juan Cuello, written by Eduardo Gutiérrez in 1880.