My aim in this article is to reconceptualise the process of censorship, not only by describinghow this process works and its development throughout this volatile period of Argentine history but also the kind of violence that films experienced and why. I will take the case of Intimidades de una cualquiera/ Intimacies of a prostitute (directed by Armando Bó and starring Isabel Sarli), a film completed in 1972 and finally released in 1974 just before Tato’s reign, to argue that by the time Tato came into power there was already an efficient yet labyrinthine apparatus in place suggesting that the intimate moment described in the song was much more public as many hands were involved in its release. Censorship was clearly taking place as long as films were challenging status quo notions of morality and politics. I will argue that the work of Sarli and Bó presents a fruitful example for the study of both industrial and moral censorship because their films helped to define the limits of what was permissible especially in the realm of sexuality. By taking an example of a film we can show how ideological positions were staked and the ensuing challenges that this would create for film historians and critics who wish to reconstruct these histories, further complicating any notion of an intrinsic artistic value of the text as many hands were involved in altering its final version.

Within this context the case of Intimidades de una cualquiera (from herein called Intimidades), Ente file 504/72, offers a meaningful example. Intimidades was shot in 1971 and finally released on 2 May 1974(Martín 160). This timeline spans a very important change in government that the country was experiencing, a shift that would mean the return of Juan Domingo Perón after an 18-year exile in Spain. While reconstructing what actually happened to this film is almost impossible since only parts of the file are accessible,[i] we can however use these primary materials (partial Ente file, DVD of an 86-minute version, film laws, and press coverage) to understand this span of film censorship and how the Bó-Sarli vehicle would be challenging these different historical moments.The file on Intimidades will shed light on three specific periods of film censorship in Argentina. Firstly, we will witness full implementation of 18019 under the directorship of Ramiro de la Fuente, a lawyer and ultra-conservative Catholic who served in such a role from 1963 to 1973. Secondly, we will observe the shift happening at the Ente under the directorship of Octavio Getino, whose mandate from the INC was to change the process and help develop and implement a new law for film classification repealing law 18019.[ii] Despite this more liberal period it still took the film another year to be released under Horacio Bordo, interim director who served until Tato replaced him in August 1974.

The film follows the usual formula of the Bó-Sarli duo—a mix of melodrama, socially conscious cinema, and erotic elements where love always triumphs. Intimidades begins with a voice over of the protagonist, Maria, telling the story of her difficult life as a prostitute and offering a confession of her intimacies. After being exploited in her hometown by her stepfather, his friends, her employers, and motivated by her boyfriend, Cholo, she moves to the big city to find employment to help pay for her ailing mother’s treatment. In the city she encounters the same abuse from men and turns to prostitution with the help and guidance of her friend Betty, who in the end will help her see the value of her work. Cholo joins her in the city and becomes her pimp exploiting her. She experiences much misfortune and is even imprisoned. After her release she returns home to a very sick mother. Upon seeing Maria as a prostitute her mother dies. Determined not to be exploited anymore, Maria chooses to travel throughout the country with her pimp. The narrative acknowledges that many things need to be done to help prostitutes: laws need to change and society must understand their circumstances and accept the valuable work they do. In Patagonia Maria meets a rich landowner, José Luis, who falls in love with her and wants to rescue her from her hardship. Even though she marries José Luis, Cholo is not willing to give her up. In the end José Luis and Cholo fight and Cholo falls off a cliff to his death, leaving Maria and José Luis free to live happily ever after.

Intimidades’ convoluted path to being released

The partial file shows that Intimidades was first given to the Ente to classify on 10 July 1972 and at that point received a classification of “prohibited.” This initiated a process of negotiation, which began with a consultation between Bó and the Ente on 1 August 1972, and a reclassification on 5 December 1972. A letter dated 11 December 1972, from the Ente’s Honorary Advisory Council, would change that status to “restricted for those under the age of 18” pending the following detailed changes: “cutting the scene of the coitus with the store owner, suppressing the lesbian scenes in the jail, the word ‘tortillera’ and the shot where she begins to take off the apron of the other inmate, suppress the scene showing the sexual organs of the man in the light blue housecoat, nude coitus with the protagonist moaning in the washroom, coitus in the marshes, shot where the protagonist walks towards the lake, opens her nightgown, kisses on the breasts in the stream, and bath of the protagonist naked in the trailer.” The letter by de la Fuente explains that the film was viewed in three versions and that the first two could not be authorized. He coincides with the Council that this new version would become permissible once it is cut accordingly. He states: “they [referring to the cuts] are so numerous that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to enumerate them all in the usual way. On the other hand, the similarity of some with what has already been authorized leaves as its only guarantee of control the fact that these [cuts] remain in deposit as will be noted in the certificate.”

These two letters underline some of the intricacies of the process and the objections the film received. Firstly, the Council was separate from the director of the Ente and could potentially interpret the lawdifferently, although, the director had the final word. As a matter of fact this occurred in this case as de la Fuente overruled the use of the word ‘tortillera’ (informally meaning ‘dike’) since he felt it could be used for an audience over 18. Nevertheless, he outlines the following cuts, “which are added to the many others already presented by the company: the shot where one can distinguish the sex organs of the man in the light blue housecoat; the part where the protagonist, walking towards the lake, opens her housecoat; and other shots that remain in the deposit.” This highlights another problem: the Ente partook in the actual cutting of films even when the producers clearly could have done it themselves. The implication of the Ente’s power to perform cuts complicates even further any attempt at piecing together this history as these filmic remnants have suffered the same fate as the files.[iii]

While limited, this portion of the file accentuates the ‘offensive’ scenes that were challenging the law and the ideological morally based censorship that was materializing. At the end of the file, there is a two-page list of the “dialogues and observable scenes” in the film. While this list was definitely composed after de la Fuente (we know this because the title of the film in the list is different from the one used in the de la Fuente’s file) it gives us an idea of some of the scenes in the film before the cuts. A comparison between the two-page list and the 86-minute version shows some clear inconsistency between this version and Bo’s original. What was being cut was the excess of sexuality. Sex was cut to be minimal to the point that certain scenes showed nothing and only insinuated sexual acts: the excesses and intimacies of the sex act are radically minimized. This produces a very awkward version with many scenes that seemingly interrupt the narrative cohesion and expose the very act of cutting/censoring. As a result there are clear gaps in the narrative and style, which go beyond the cheap aesthetics of the duo. As has been noted previously the cuts performed by the censors, who were not necessarily filmmakers (as was the case of de la Fuente) ironically exposes the censorship apparatus. At times one wonders whether parts of this were done deliberately by Bó to divulge the censorship that was taking place. We can accentuate some important patterns here that need further fleshing out.

Primarily, the scene that is problematic in the criticism by both the Council and the director is the frontal nude scene of the man with the light blue housecoat. This married man is the ex-employer of Maria, meaning that she continued to see him in her work as a prostitute. Despite this being a clear violation of prohibiting representation of adultery, the problem I will argue has more to do with male nudity itself. While both José Luis and Cholo appear nude in parts of the film, you never really see intimate parts of their bodies. However, Maria’s nude body appears throughout the film in full exposure. The camera from all sides, front, and back, constantly captures her body. The opening of the film, as will be discussed in detail later on, and the later scenes of Maria in the water during her time with her new husband José Luis clearly show her breasts, pubic areas, and buttocks (figure 1). The documentation refers to two male nude scenes that are eventually cut from the film. These are the one of the male in the light blue housecoat with a shot of his penis and another of Cholo’s buttocks when he is raping Maria near the end of the movie. Both scenes in question are cut in an awkward way in order to eliminate exposing the male bodies. This discrepancy and hypocrisy about what is permissible for both male and female bodies exposes an inconsistency in the application of the law by whoever was doing the actual cutting.

Moreover, the documentation reveals a particular problem with the prison scenes when Maria meets Olga, with whom she engages in lesbian sex. This part of the film incorporates the popular genre of “women in prison films,” trendy in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Clearly this scene was offensive because from a Catholic perspective it could be argued that it violated three of 18019’s principles: it represented “behaviour against the family,” “justified sexual perversions,” and “incorporated lascivious scenes that disgust morale and good customs.” In the latest version this scene does not last very long, a mere minute. Yet in the documentation it seems to be the most contentious scene. In Diego Curubeto’s Carne sobre carne(2008), a documentary about the censored material of the duo, he uses a clip from this scene, meaning that Bó had to cut his own scene. Given the documentation I suspect that the Ente itself cut much of this scene. In the final version the sex is hardly visible, only insinuated, and awkwardly executed.The Council does express much concern about the topic as it suggests to “suppress lesbian scenes in jail,” as a general note. De la Fuente does not particularly mention the scene but it is clear that he makes necessary cuts to the film in general, cuts all to obvious in the fragmented 86-minute version. The actual encounter, which features Olga kissing Maria on the shoulders and peeling off her uniform, is interrupted by the suspicion of the guard’s arrival as the sex continues it is only heard during a shot of a wall. The lead up features a conversation between the two, interrupted various times with a cross cut of a fight scene and a flashback of the actual sex scene. The sequence looks as clumsy as it sounds and has been certainly severely cut. The file has allowed us to read the way that censorship was enacted during de la Fuente’s stint as director of the Ente, a fervent actor who took it upon himself to make cuts deemed necessary in interpreting the law.

On 14 December 1972 the film received the official classification certificate from de la Fuente. This version runs for 90 minutes, 4 minutes longer than the current version on DVD. (This is an important point as studying the work of Bó and Sarli is always complicated by the many versions that existed and the few that are still available). Nonetheless, on the certificate, in the file, de la Fuente’s signature is missing. The file shows a gap since the documentation of what happens after this certificate is authorized is absent as the film would not be released until one and a half years later.

A hiccup in the system

After Hector Campora came to power and democracy brought the return of Perón to Argentina in 1973, a liberalization of the INC and the Ente also took place. On 8 August1973Octavio Getino takes the directorship of the Ente for a period of 90 days. In this time he re-structured the Ente and replaced the leagues, which made up the Council with others, involving instead psychologists and psychoanalysts, sociologists, film critics and directors in the classification exercise. The Ente then allowed the release of many films previously prohibited for political reasons such as State of siege (Costa-Gavras, 1973) and The devils (Ken Russell, 1972) and others for moral reasons like The decameron (Pasolini, 1972) and Last tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1973) (Maranghello 2005, 652). During Getino’s period the Ente classified, instead of censoring films. Getino also set up experimental public classification sessions where the public decided if the film was apt for all, or for those over 14 or 18 (Maranghello 2005, 654). When Getino’s term was ending he had a falling out with the Minister of Culture, which terminated his position. However, Getino would continue to work with the Perón government as adviser on film legislation until the death of Perón on 1 July 1974.[iv] Miguel Paulino Tato would be made the head of the Ente after Perón’s death in August 1974, the same month which the new president Isabel Maria Estela Martínez de Perón would sign the new film law proposed by the INC and others, but which would be shelved. After the death of Perónthe activities of the left and the triple A, a rightwing state violence group, were becoming more commonplace and the country was entering a political crisis that would lead to the military coup on 25 March 1976.

The gap between the certificate issued by de la Fuente and the next document date 1 September 1973, a letter by Getino, spans almost a year. This suggests that in the end Intimidades did not get the final approval from the Ente. In this letter Getino gives Manuel Augusto Padilla, the Assistant Director of the Ente the authority to classify the film. Padilla’s letter dated on September 13, 1973 states that the “the lesbian sequence performed in the women’s prison due to its harsh realism and its content and prolonged duration infringes on some of the dispositions of article 2 of 18019.” (Article 2 outlines the six areas that must be avoided in film). He also states that in order for immediate classification the Ente must follow the current rules as stipulated by the government, meaning that given the law the flexibility is minimal. Therefore, the lesbian scene was still presenting problems even for this new leadership who had a more liberal agenda and was already permitting films that were previously banned. During the same period, on 11 September 1973 in La gaceta, a film trade magazine, Getino publically warns “Not so much eroticism” (“No tanto erotismo” 289). Apparently, he was inundated with erotic films for new classification, of the 17 films he received 9 were “objectionable and bordered on pornography.” His argument is based not on the moral standards of the law but on the fact that the changes he is making to the Ente are enduring real criticism from important organizations. Therefore, classification of all these erotic and “pornographic” films will justify the work of those trying to stop the changes from occurring. He spoke for 50 minutes at a conference explaining thisstrategy. In other words, in order to change the law and eliminate censorship he needed to apply questions of freedom judiciously. In the end he didn’t think that films that selling sex contributed to his more serious political cause. He also pointed out that penal code 128 was still in effect and even if he were to release all these films people could denounce them in court for being “obscene.”[v]This public condemnation takes place precisely in the timeframe when Bó submits Intimidades for classification.