By Jeremy Carr.
Its pulp façade encases a genuine, sincere examination of sundry motivations, dilemmas, and outcomes, routinely begging the question stated in one its many songs: ‘Why did fate make you a sinner?’”
Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del Pecado, is an aptly titled Mexican melodrama where the concept of getting comfortable or complacent is as likely foreign as the film’s unseemly settings and alarming conduct. Directed by Emilio Fernández, this seductive yet disturbing 1951 feature was recently released by the Criterion Collection and is one of the company’s more pleasantly unexpected recent entries. Going in blind, there is no way to anticipate or prepare for its visual and aural delights, its onslaught of depraved behavior and rampant despair, and – somehow through it all – its immensely satisfying results.
The film begins with the image of a sharply-dressed, well-groomed man pulling from his pocket a wad of cash as he pays a barber. The man emerges incongruously placed in a realm of apparent destitution, but in fact is the embodiment of such a world. This is Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta), a thief, killer, and a dastardly pimp. He is soon cornered by the distraught Rita (Rita Montaner), who comes bearing Rodolfo’s child, which he swiftly shuns, calling the baby a “freak” and a “monster” and demanding Rita chose between him or the newborn. She opts for the former, going so far as to dispose of the infant in a streetside trash can. This audacious action is one of many jarring moments in Victims of Sin, which is unflinching in its depiction of tested morality, but, thankfully, cabaret performer Violeta (Ninón Sevilla) is having none of it. She adopts the child as her own, with unfortunate, albeit altruistic, consequences. Although she finds a glimmer of hope in Rodolfo’s rival, Santiago (Tito Junco), who seems comparatively kindhearted, like everything else in the film this apparently positive recourse appears tenuous at best.
Set in Mexico City’s red light district, Victims of Sin is awash in the pictorial trappings of a film noir. From its neon lights and saturated streets to its dark shadows and murky alleyways, the picture is both seedy and swanky – depending on the angle – but it almost always resides on the edge of violence, exploitation, and desperation. Repeated high angle shots of its central location’s exterior, just outside the Club Changoo, give the impression of entrapment and inescapability, while inside the picture pulses to a rhythmic, hypnotic concoction of music and dance. The musical interludes provide a brief respite from the stress and anxiety, but such adjournments are short-lived. Even Santiago’s club, which is supposed to be a more hospitable location compared to Rodolfo’s sadistic arena, is mere feet from a railroad track and is flooded by smoke, soot, and the rumbling sounds of passing trains.
Wherever the film takes place, however, there is an undercurrent of severe sexuality, both blatant and derived from innuendo, as well an attractive luminosity courtesy of the talented cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. In a supplement on the Criterion disc, fellow DP Rodrigo Prieto pays tribute to Figueroa, who operated in the same role on more than 200 films, including several for Luis Buñuel and such diverse American features as Don Siegel’s Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and John Huston’s Under the Volcano (1984). Influenced by Gregg Toland, Figueroa’s own aptitude for deep focus photography, camera movement, and rich, detailed chiaroscuro lighting is fully displayed in Victims of Sin, where settings this bad have no business looking so good.
There is no way to anticipate or prepare for its visual and aural delights, its onslaught of depraved behavior and rampant despair, and – somehow through it all – its immensely satisfying results.”
Contributing to the brilliance of the film – indeed supplying and amplifying much of it – is Ninón Sevilla, a stunning actress who, understandably, was a major Mexican star at the time. With bright eyes and a hopeful smile, her Violeta is initially a breath of fresh air. She is ambitious (perhaps tragically so) and seems outwardly oblivious to, or in subtle defiance of, the surrounding misery. She shines when performing on the cabaret floor and is overjoyed by the perceived burden of the baby, unhesitatingly dashing off to tend to the child. But this cheery demeanor is deceptive. When confronted by the assorted, unremittingly aggressive men in her periphery, she is fiery and impassioned. She essentially leads a handful of superior strong women who stand up to their chauvinistic counterparts and is willing to do whatever it takes to provide for her newfound son, including, in one particularly heartbreaking scene, taking her place in a row of prostitutes lining a sidewalk. Violeta’s durable will and sense of purpose coalesce in one of the film’s most arresting shots (one of the most arresting shots in any film) as she climbs through a window brandishing a gun and delivers her own personal rectitude.
Sevilla’s range is impressive, consistently expressing her seductiveness and her simultaneous capacity for emotional engagement; her complete overtaking of the frame with every appearance is a testament to her distinction. Filmmaker and archivist Viviana Garcia Besné provides Criterion with a fascinating overview of the Cuban-born actress’s career trajectory, discussing her own amusing interactions with Sevilla and shedding light on one key biographical facet that likely contributed to her phenomenal turn in Victims of Sin, which conveys simple decency with a self-sacrificing maternal instinct: she was forced to have an abortion just weeks before filming.
That sort of real-life trauma is reflected in a film that, though occasionally overheated, can still be shockingly brutal. Victims of Sin is a ruthless and stark motion picture, gorgeously photographed and visually dynamic, but frequently unsettling. At the same time, its pulp façade encases a genuine, sincere examination of sundry motivations, dilemmas, and outcomes, routinely begging the question stated in one its many songs: “Why did fate make you a sinner?” The are a few moments of levity, though, as when some of the women have had enough and give it to the Club Changoo’s manager, only to have a chaotic brawl immediately ensue. But primarily, the film’s tone and narrative are downbeat to say the least.
Years pass near the end of the film and we see the baptism of the precocious child now being raised by Violeta and Santiago, as well as a series of scenes that propose what passes for a relatively stable and contented domestic situation. But Victims of Sin doesn’t allow anyone to get settled for long – neither the characters nor the viewer. If there’s a single criticism of the film, then, it’s how rushed the conclusion becomes. Optimistic and ultimately gratifying though it is, with its brief meditation on justice and humanity, the rapid final act tidies everything up a bit too quickly, even if it does feel like a much-needed and welcome relief from all that transpired before.
Given Victims of Sin’s relative and surprising obscurity, Prieto and Besné provide valuable insights into what makes the film such an inspiring discovery, as does Jacqueline Avila, who wrote the Criterion essay, “Victims of Sin: Dancing in the Dark.” While describing and making a case for Emilio Fernandez as “one of Mexican cinema’s most celebrated auteurs – a visionary populist filmmaker,” Avila also contributes a superior survey of the cabaretera film – “an offshoot of the popular ‘prostitute melodrama’ genre set in cabarets and involving elaborate music and dance sequences” – and, more broadly, the “golden age of Mexican cinema (época de oro) … one of the most significant periods within Mexican cinematic – and cultural – history.” An archival documentary also included on the disc likewise places Victims of Sin in a cultural and cinematic context that adds weight to its already heavy subject matter. Together, the interviews, essay, and documentary serve their best possible purpose by whetting the appetite for more from Mexican cinema, especially from those involved on this exceptional picture.
Jeremy Carr is a Contributing Editor at Film International and teaches film studies at Arizona State University. He writes for the publications Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, MUBI/Notebook, Cinema Retro, Vague Visages, The Retro Set, The Moving Image, Diabolique Magazine and Fandor. He is the author of Repulsion (1965) from Auteur Publishing and Kubrick and Control from Liverpool University Press a contributor to the collections ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May, from Edinburgh University Press, and David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation, from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.