Luis Saslavsky: Lived and imagined Hollywood

Abstract

Luis Saslavsky occupies an uncomfortable place in Argentinian Cinema. Within his figure converge his juvenile education in Paris –as many other Argentinian intellectuals– with a trip to Hollywood as a film reporter for the newspaper La Nación. Inbetween French culture and the new visual pleasures brought by a new media which became more and more established with time (Cinema), Saslavsky’s life varies from the involvement in avant-garde Literary Magazines to his work in the film industry as a filmmaker of box office hits. Along his career, Saslavsky’s work has been as questioned as celebrated, and many of his films and some of his public appearances became a threat to certain tendency which made efforts to consolidate an Argentinian Cinema based on the essential texts of National Literature and to build an image of a country that would not be ridiculed with its arrabal themes. On the contrary, Saslavsky never escaped from the most popular genres –comedy, melodrama and crime films- and made them coexist with his cosmopolite education. With his trip to Hollywood as a starting point, this article has the purpose to regain some forgotten pieces of his early works as a film critic and film reporter in order to relate them to the years of the consolidation of Argentina’s film industry, during which he was a highly regarded character.