Alton's Paradox

Nicolas Poppe is Associate Professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies at Middlebury College and the coeditor (with Rielle Navitski) of Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments1. Alton's Paradox2. Hollywood, City of Dreams: The First SpanishLanguage Film Industry3. "The Biggest Revelation of Hispanic Cinema": José Mojica's Transnational Stardom4. Mexico City Dreams: The Emergence of Latin America's Most Important Film Industry5. "The Best We Have in This Forsaken Place": Cinematography and Collaboration in Alex Phillips's Films with Arcady Boytler and Fernando de Fuentes6. "But only one, Juan Orol, is fundamentally different from the rest": Orolian Melodrama and cursilería in the 1930s7. In the Studios of Buenos Aires: The Rise and Fall of Argentina's Film Industry8. "The Primary Champion of National Film": Ángel Mentasti and the Invention of Argentina Sono Film9. "A Man Expert in the Needs of the Set": Tito Davison, an Éminence grise in the Argentine Film Industry of the Late 1930s and Early 1940s10. Foreign Film Workers and the Emergence of Industrial Sound Film in Latin AmericaNotesBibliographyIndex

"A book that film scholars, historians of Latin America, and students will find stimulating and innovative, Alton's Paradox is a provocative inquiry into the many meanings and definitions of a 'national film culture,' the essentially transnational character of cinema, and the persisting and everlasting relationship between Latin American cinema and Hollywood." — Hispanic American Historical Review