Argentina Sono Film

First decade, founding and development

Luis José Moglia Barth, the director of several films in the silent era, made a proposition to Ángel Mentasti, a prominent businessman in the film industry, to direct a sound feature film based around tango; this formed the beginnings of Argentina Sono Film. The name of this film was to be ¡Tango!, in which popular figures, already well-known by the public, would sing and dance throughout. The stars which Mentasti recruited were: Azucena Maizani, Luis Sandrini, Libertad Lamarque, Mercedes Simone, Tita Merello, Pepe Arias, Alberto Gómez, Alicia Vignoli, Meneca Tailhade and Juan Sarcione. ¡Tango! thus became the first feature film produced by Argentina Sono Film and also marked the beginning of the sound era in Argentine cinema. Within the field of cinematic historiography, certain scholars suggest that other films, making use of the same technology, had already been finished by the time of ¡Tango!; there isno doubt, however, that ¡Tango! was the first sound film to be exhibited. The same year, Dancing (1933) was directed by Luis José Moglia Barth and was also a musical film based around tango; there are no existing copies of the film.