Escena, extraescena, público. El teatro de títeres en el cine argentino (1938-1968)

Abstract

In Títere: magia del teatro (1963), Mane Bernardo reviewed the presence of puppets in Argentine cinema. Although in this list she combined formats without establishing technical distinctions, when enumerating these experiences she brought to the fore the productivity of the dialogue between puppetry and audiovisual media. If until now it was only possible to imagine the puppet within a theatrical framework, here I will focus my attention on the cinematographic construction of a —at first glance— theatrical device to show the performance of the puppets. The corpus brings together broadcasts from the Noticiero Panamericano and Sucesos Argentinos, and films such as Madreselva (1938), Donde mueren las palabras (1946), Gringalet (1959) and La novela de un joven pobre (1968). I am interested in the incursions of puppets in Argentine cinema, but also into the ways in which those puppets were presented, the strategies deployed to do so, and the meanings constructed.