As is known, the Argentine cinema was industrialized largely thanks to tango. Many of the directors who made those early sonorous successes had long careers previous to their incorporation to the film world, linked to the theater and particularly to the revista porteña (a Buenos Aires typical theatrical genre). In those plays, they were playwrights, directors and songwriters of the tangos. In this paper, we select Luis César Amadori as a paradigmatic case, one of the fundamental directors in the Argentinean film industry, not only by having an extensive filmography but for creating memorable hits. We argue that his previous experience as tango lyricist, theater author, director and producer can be clearly seen in his films, since 1935. Here we examine at El pobre Pérez (1936), Madreselva (1938), Caminito de gloria (1939) and La canción de los barrios (1940) how the songs are deployed to make sense of filmic fictions and also how they construct a national imaginary tied to the tango narratives.