Lecture by Russell Merritt

(Victimas del pecado). 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, rumba dancer first and foremost, and incidentally an over-the-top actress. She portrays a cabaret dancer trying to raise a 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 film genre known as rumberas. Rodolfo Acosta is Sevilla's perverse pimp/artistic director (his zoot-suited dance will bring down the house), while Tito Junco as her enigmatic would-be savior walks the streets with his sorrows and ever-present mariachi sounds in tow. Also discover here the rhythms of Perez Prado and urban chanteuse Rita Montaner.