Manuel Romero (Buenos Aires, 21 September 18913 October 1954) was an Argentine filmmaker, playwright, impresario, theatre director and tango lyricist. He was credited with 53 films, 178 plays and 146 song lyrics. Romero was one of the creators of the revista porteña (local revue), one of the leading writers of the movement, and one of the first directors of the Golden Age of Argentine cinema, becoming the most prolific and commercially successful Argentine filmmaker of the 1930s. Closely associated with the Buenos Aires nightlife, he developed his career as the Argentine entertainment industry was taking form, and his work helped define the modern porteño cultural identity. In 2026, the National Library of Argentina described him as "one of the most versatile, prolific and influential figures in Argentine popular culture."

Romero began writing plays in the 1910s, while working as a journalist and theatre critic in Fray Mocho, and other publications, and went on to write numerous revues, sainetes, comedies, melodramas and some . His main field was the revue, and with Ivo Pelay and Luis Bayón Herrera he was one of the three leading authors of the genre. In the 1920s, the three developed the revista porteña, drawing on the French companies that visited Buenos Aires and on what Romero saw on his frequent trips to Paris. From 1926, he led his own revue companies at the Ópera and Sarmiento theatres, while his other plays were staged by the companies of Enrique Muiño and Elías Alippi, and Luis Arata, among others. Many of his tangos were first sung on stage in these plays, including "" (1922), premiered by Ignacio Corsini, "" (1923), the first tango to personify the city, and "Tiempos viejos" (1926). Carlos Gardel recorded eighteen of his songs.

In 1931, during a European tour with his revue company, Romero and Bayón Herrera wrote the story of Las luces de Buenos Aires, Gardel's first sound feature, made by Paramount at its Joinville Studios near Paris, where Romero then directed his first two films, Spanish-language versions of earlier productions by the American studio. Back in Buenos Aires, he was hired by Lumiton, the first Argentine studio organized on industrial lines, which was looking for a director with experience in popular entertainment. His first film for the studio, Noches de Buenos Aires (1935), had each of its stars do what they were already famous for on stage and radio, with Tita Merello singing tangos, Fernando Ochoa reciting verses and Enrique Serrano delivering comic lines. Its success set the model for a long series of films, nearly all of them written by Romero himself and shot at great speed, that brought together figures from radio, revue and tango; Romero gave Niní Marshall and Hugo del Carril their first film roles and helped consolidate Luis Sandrini's comic screen persona. His films sided with the poor against the rich and often poked fun at figures of authority, though their endings usually restored the social order. Romero was also the first Argentine filmmaker to write active, independent female characters, as in La rubia del camino and Mujeres que trabajan (both 1938).

Although his films were box office hits, critics and intellectuals of the time looked down on them, and reviewers who welcomed the growth of the national industry disliked the way Romero catered to the "easy tastes" of mass audiences. He left Lumiton in 1943 and from 1946 worked mainly for Argentina Sono Film, where he made successful films with the singer Alberto Castillo and worked again with Niní Marshall. Historians generally regard this later period as one of stylistic decline, marked by a depletion of his own formulas, although El hincha (1951), made with Enrique Santos Discépolo, is among the most celebrated films of his final years. After Un guapo del 900 was left unfinished when Lumiton went bankrupt in 1952, he made one more film, ¡Uei, paesano! (1953), and died in Buenos Aires the following year. Like much of Argentina's classical cinema, many of his films are lost or survive only in 16 mm copies, as most of Lumiton's negatives were probably destroyed in a laboratory fire in 1969. His work began to be reassessed in the 1980s and 1990s by writers such as Abel Posadas, Rodrigo Tarruella and Andrés Insaurralde. Fuera de la ley (1937) was ranked tenth in the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken's 1977 poll of the greatest Argentine films, and Mujeres que trabajan was included in the top 100 of the 2022 edition.

Films This list of films is based on the filmographies in Manuel Romero by Andrés Insaurralde and Diccionario de realizadores by Clara Kriger and Alejandra Portela. Details for individual films are from Un diccionario de films argentinos (1930–1995) by Raúl Manrupe and Portela unless another source is cited. Premieres took place in Buenos Aires cinemas unless otherwise stated.