Victims of Sin

(Victimas del pecado)

Emilio Fernández
Mexico, 1951

Digital Restoration

Introduction

  • Peter Conheim

    Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) worked with Viviana Garcia-Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico) to restore this film.

  • December 14 only
    Viviana Garcia-Besné

    Viviana Garcia-Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico) worked with Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) to restore this film.

featuring

Rodolfo Acosta, Ninón Sevilla, Tito Junco, Rita Montaner,

Classic Mexican melodrama shows us that the excesses of Luis Buñuel and Arturo Ripstein did not come out of nowhere. Victims of Sin is a tour de force for Ninón Sevilla, a rumba dancer and, incidentally, an over-the-top actress. She portrays a cabaret dancer trying to raise an abandoned kid and forced into prostitution. “Victims of the Social Structure” doesn’t make a very good title, but that’s what it’s all about—albeit exploited to the point of high camp—in the entertaining film musicals known as rumberas. Rodolfo Acosta is Sevilla’s zoot-suited artistic director/pimp (a jerk, but what a dancer!), while Tito Junco as her enigmatic would-be savior walks the streets with his sorrows and ever-present mariachi sounds in tow. With all this, plus the rhythms of Perez Prado and urban chanteuse Rita Montaner, Gabriel Figueroa’s fabulous framing and lighting in a film noir vein are like the icing on the little brat’s cake.

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Emilio Fernández
  • Mauricio Magdaleno
Cinematographer
  • Gabriel Figueroa
Language
  • Spanish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 84 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
Additional Info
  • Victims of Sin was fully restored in 4K from the original 35mm nitrate camera negative, which had been damaged from mishandling over the decades, by Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) and Viviana Garcia-Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico). Permanencia Voluntaria and Cinema Preservation Alliance coproduced the preservation effort with further assistance from IMCINE and the Academy Film Archive, bringing Victims of Sin back to the screen with a clarity and depth not seen since its original release.

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