Two takes on gender in Argentine film noir

Two popular Argentine films noirs display original attitudes regarding gender. Carlos Hugo Christensen's Si muero antes de despertar/If I Should Die Before I Wake (1952) adapts a short story by US noir writer Cornell Woolrich in a way that questions Woolrich's celebration of the tough male. Mario Soffici's Rosaura a las diez/Rosaura at Ten O'Clock (1958) is a self-conscious reprise of the femme fatale that traces the reiterative scripting of woman by the film's protagonist, her transformation into a destabilising menace, and the expunging of the threat through further writing. The representation of the feminine in these films is remarkable for the time when they were made.