We continue the exploration of the cabaretera or rumberas genre. These melodramas about the "lower depths" were shot in and around cabarets, their woman-centered tragedies set pointedly against the gay and moody rumberas music and dance (this film features a spectacular performance by the Afro-Cuban group El Son Clave de Oro). In these films, it has been noted, there is a confusion between cabaret and bordello; for the woman in question, a fine line between public spectacle and private humiliation. Salon Mexico and Victims of Sin (February 4) mark Emilio Fernández (El Indio)'s turn from the provincial exposé to the urban one, and he not surprisingly offers a bleaker view of urban migration than the "new prosperity" might suggest: prostitution and crime are just displaced symptoms of powerlessness. Marga López stars as Mercedes, saloon denizen and prostitute who supports her unsuspecting younger sister. Mercedes's efforts to get an education (the signature element of El Indio) are thwarted by her abusive pimp. Ida Lupino would have been at home in Salon Mexico, we think.