Resumo

 The films of José Bohr (1901-1994) and Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011), the most prolific filmmakers in Chilean cinema history, offer two contrasting approaches to humor and the representation of the popular in Chilean cinema. While Bohr’s work is rooted in mass culture, emphasizing wit and the “pillería del chileno” (the cunning of the Chilean), Ruiz deconstructs national identity through an exploration of absurdity, hybridity, and the fragmentation of cinematic language. In both cases, humor is central to the cinematographic project, operating as a device that negotiates between affirmation and instability. Bohr’s cinematic humor is structured within a framework of classical causality, with linear progression and clearly defined comedic resolutions. His humor relies on physical gags and slapstick, structured through causality logic, aligning with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of movementimage. Bohr also employs techniques that reveal the cinematic artifice and the mechanics of film production, generating a reflection on the cinematic medium. Conversely, Ruiz’s cinema dismantles fixed notions of identity, emphasizing the absurd, the singularity, and the half-blood of Chileans’ language. In Ruiz’s work, humor and temporality do not adhere to causal logic but unfold as a sequence of events that can lose their linear coherence, inscribing his cinema within the time-image. This paper compares two cinematic approaches that, while sharing similar objects of study, produce dissimilar outcomes. Discussing the role of the spectator, the status of the popular in Chilean cinema, humor as a mechanism of social regulation or disruption, and the distinction between movementimage and time-image.