VICTIMS OF SIN
(director/writer: Emilio Fernandez; screenwriter: story by Mauricio Magdalene & Emilio Fernandez; cinematographer: Gabriel Figueroa; editor: Gloria Schoemann; music: Antonio Diaz Conde; cast: Rodolfo Acosta (Rodolfo), Tito Junco (Santiago), Ninón Sevilla (Violeta), Rita Montaner (Rita), Ismael Perez (Juanito), Margarita Ceballos (Rosa), Arturo Soto Rangel (Prison Director), Francisco Reigners (Don Gazalo, cabaret boss); Runtime: 90; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Pedro Calderon, Guillermo Calderon; Criterion Collection; 1951-B/W–Mexico-in Spanish with English subtitles)
“One of the great noir melodramas.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Renown Mexican filmmaker Emilio Fernandez (“Salon Mexico”/”Mexico Norte”), called “El Indio,” directs and writes this crowd pleasing musical, weepy melodrama, from a story he wrote with Mauricio Magdalene. It was shot during the “golden age” of Mexican cinema by the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, and restored and released this June by the Criterion Collection.
It follows the tale of Violeta (Ninón Sevilla, Cuban-born actress), a fiery Cabaret Changoo featured blonde dancer in Mexico City, in its red light district, where the dancers are “Taxi Girls.” When one of her dancer pals, Rosa (Margarita Ceballos), brings home a baby sired by the wretched zoot-suited pimp gangster Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta) and she throws it in the trashcan on the cad’s orders, Violeta retrieves it and raises it. The more humane club owner, Santiago (Tito Junco), gets her some work in a rural club he owns by the railroad tracks, but Violeta still supports herself and her child mainly as a street prostitute.
Things go well when Rodolfo goes to prison, but when he gets out he goes after Violeta and her 6-year-old son Juanito (Ismael Perez). Violeta is imprisoned in her battle with him, but gets parole on the recommendations from 2 sympathetic prison guards.
In the final act, Violeta doesn’t back down from Rodolfo and confronts him in a fight between them that pulls no punches.
The pic is framed on how the resilient and self-sacrificing Violeta deals with the violent macho piggish Rodolfo, and how she shows her passion dancing at the clubs to the pulsating Afro-Cuban sounds of the rumba and mambo in an uninhibited frenzy.
This is one of the great noir melodramas.
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REVIEWED ON 7/20/2024 GRADE: A