ere Portuguese is spoken, did not require foreign markets for its films, standing as it did as a market unto itself. However, the war did create a demand in Brazil for national films, and in the 1940s its studios produced up to 100 movies a year. Argentina was Mexico's strongest competitor in the late thirties and early forties, and its production was still ahead of Mexico's in 1941 with 47 films to Mexico's 37.
Mexican film production in 1941 represented many of the basic formulas that were favored by Latin American audiences. The first was the historical/patriotic epic, which was not new to Mexican cinema, though these productions did not have the budgets or shooting schedules of their more expensive Hollywood counterparts. The second major formula was exemplified by movies starring Cantinflas, featuring the popular comic in such a successful manner that he continued making essentially the same film for the next three decades. Third was the melodrama based on attachment to the traditional values of God, country, and home. There were numerous variations on this theme in the forties, often showing the family endangered by some temptation from the outside world, such as a cabaret girl in Alberto Gout's Sensuality (1950) or a vacuum-cleaner salesman in Alejandro Galindo's An Ordinary Family (1948).
The Banco Cinematografico was founded in 1942 to organize the film industry on a more rational financial basis. This began as a private institution, though the government was clearly interested in this new credit agency and though it was backed by official agencies. The board of directors consisted of six bankers and industrialists and two cineasts. The industry achieved its maturity in 1943 when it produced 70 films and established itself as a true national industry. In that same year, Argentina's output declined to 36 and Spain's to 53. There were a number of reasons for this change and for the specific success of the Mex...