The Laugh of Niní Marshall. Comic Performance and Gender Performativity in Argentinean Classical Cinema

LAGUARDA, PAULA INÉS

Humor in Latin American Cinema

Palgrave Macmillan

Año: 2015; p. 67 - 84

This article focuses on the figure of Niní Marshall, one of the most important actresses in Argentinean cinema between the 1930's and 1950's. It analyzes her characters in gender terms and argues that it is in Marshall's comic performance where the distance with respect to social and female stereotypes of the period is configured in the very films.The humor of her most remembered characters, Cándida and Catita, was based in a construction that stressed and exaggerated certain aesthetic features, gestures, body movements, linguistic patterns and speech forms; but at the same time gave her creatures a psychological and emotional complexity that, like other famous characters of Latin American cinema, connected with the needs of verisimilitude and recognition of the audience.