Women and Transvestism in Spanish Cinema Prior to the Civil War (1927-1935): Between Agency and Homosexuality

In the last years, queer studies applied to the history of Spanish cinema have experienced notable development. While these studies have mainly focused on representations created during the democratic era, more recently, they have also explored the long period of the Franco regime. This article aims to take a step further by investigating Spanish cinema prior to the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. Specifically, it analyzes how, between 1927 and 1935, images of cross-dressed women emerged in some pioneering films. These images were connected to the new models of femininity of the first third of the 20th century and the anxieties they generated. Similarly, based on the discursive framework of comedy, these images were early approaches to the representation of homosexuality in the history of Spanish audiovisuals. Through historical research, narratives, images and discourses from three lost films —Historia de un taxi (1927), Susana tiene un secreto (1933) and Amor en maniobras (1935)— are recovered to analyze how the transgressive potential of transvestism worked in them. This allowed their protagonists to gain power and/or access to male environments, as well as facilitating, in the first film, the first homosexual kiss documented in Spanish cinema or, in the third film, the exploration of the taboo of homosexuality in military contexts.