Si muero antes de despertar, by Carlos Hugo Christensen: the ways of being a man, between modalities of police procedural and noir

Abstract

This text analyzes the film Si muero antes de despertar (1952), by Carlos Hugo Christensen, from two different points of view: the modalities of police procedural movie and the film noir. The first of them is associated with law, order, and institutions (family, school, church), while the second is associated with forbidden sexual desires and criminality. Besides this, I study the configuration of different masculinities that lies below that opposite orders. I also study the areas of the city, not only from a geographical perspective but also from a moral one: on the one hand, the kind neighborhood that includes the family home and the school; and on the other hand, the vacant land, a place that hides the wicked sexual desire.